New Poems

Girl on a Beach

You were just a little girl
Sitting on the beach,
With a pen and scraps of paper;
While a storm raged on.

You could have run away,
Sought safer ground,
But you wanted to capture the fierce beauty
That lay within the winds.

Sand blasted your face,
Stinging your eyes; grit in your teeth,
But the words kept coming,
Your hand kept moving
And you stayed to catch them all.

All around you waves crashed off rocks
Hurricane strength winds lifted sand-banks,
Changing your surroundings.
You clung to the edge of your towel,
Grasping to something familiar.

The tides rose higher and higher,
The waves crashed closer and closer:
Caught between the moon and the Earth
In their giant game of tug-o’-war.

It was too late for anyone to save you;
No lifeguard on duty, nobody watching.
Swept away in a deafening roar,
By an awesome natural force.

Your pen, clutched by a lifeless hand,
But the scraps of paper blew inland.
The ink was running, wet from sea-water and tears,
But the words, the beautiful words, could still be read:

You suffered, gave yourself as a poetic sacrifice,
So we could know the beauty that lay within a storm.



One Year Later

Even though it has been a year since you left,
We didn’t stop thinking about you.
We couldn’t stop,
You were in every ounce of our lives.
When we tried to sleep at night
You were there telling us stories,
In a hushed soft voice.
When I closed my eyes to cry
You were there to dry the tears,
With a soft protective hand.

There will come a day
When we can walk with you again,
Hear you laugh and listen to your dreams,
But until then we will love you
And think about you everyday,
As if you are here with us.

We miss you Mam,
And pray that God holds you dear,
As you were dear to us in this life.



St. Mary’s Graveyard, Killybegs 2004

People live and people die,
They die all the time,
And we are left as witnesses
To their ever fading memory.

Names engraved on marble,
Flowers dying on gravel,
Weeds growing up the side
Of a once thoughtful memento.

Hatred and hurt buried
Six-feet under,
No voice, no release,
Only memory and words left behind
To vouch for the fallen.

Every one of them walked these streets,
Breathed this air
And mourned these plots,
Never imagining that one day
They too would fill the earth
And return to the Universal Mother
What they had only borrowed.

I want to cry for you all.
But not a tear will come,
The well is empty,
Only ‘cause I know
That perhaps someday
I too will lie beside
You and gather dirt and weeds
Alongside my own memory.

But till then
I will be your witness
And withhold my judgment
Leaving you all at peace
In your plots,
The last place you’ll ever live.



Connect the Dots

If you were to connect all the dots
Since you learned to hold pencil between
Forefinger and thumb
What would the picture look like?

A red summer sky setting behind a mountain,
Bursting skywards, mushroom like
Above a Japanese City:

Or would it be a million lithe Gazelle jumping over a bluff
Into the jaws of a thousand gapping crocodiles.

A muddy faced child playing in a ditch,
Wondering where his parent’s are,
And why does his belly hurt so much?

Whatever picture it is that develops
When one connects to two, two connect to three,
It is a picture of the unique, of the individual soul,
One that only you can connect.

It’s your pen, no one will add the dots
Or place the numbers: only you.



Once upon a time…

A young Vine grew in the spring rains.
When the summer came it met the Sun
Reaching out its leaves to catch the warm rays.
Every morning the Sun and the Vine met
And began to love each other,
Giving each other happiness and life.
Then the fruit of their love was pressed
Into the most beautiful wine,
Bottled and stored,
As a special marriage between the Vine and the Sun.



Fossil

There have always been things that I’ve loved,
There have always been things that I’ve missed,
Cried for and lusted after.

But what have they all been but bitter disappointments,
So tonight I say fuck ‘em all, to hell with them,
I will do without, ‘cause once I get them, I just want more,
They cause a gluttony in a man’s soul and when he thirsts for such things
He can never be satisfied.

A savage beast is not so out of necessity,
It is out of a cruel inbreed want of pleasure,
Born to the marrow,
Killing for the joy, to feel the strength over the weak.
A carcass nibbled and left to rot on the side of a mountain.

The beast must be tamed, brought to bear it’s wrath,
Held up to its head like a mirror,
To see the waste that has lain in its trail of years,
Perhaps then it will only take what it needs to survive,
Or is it too late, is extinction the only real solution for
Such an abhorrence of nature, one that lives so far outside the
Realm of even animalistic civilization?
Should it be fossilized and buried under a hundred feet of rock.
Left there for someone treasure seeker to find a million years from now
And imaginatively try to piece together a romantic and heroic story for such
A savage beast cast in rock.

Will the chipping of the rock chip away its guilty conscience?
Cleansing it to a noble creature that may have roamed an ancient plain,
With grace and skill, will the lie remain buried with the bones
And a false truth told with petrified fossil pretenders of the real self?

I am afraid of the lies that will be read from this fossil long after the beast
Is gone, no longer able to tell its own vile story,
It own vicious tale of want and destruction,
Perhaps that yarn is best left untold, the reality too much
For the soft ears of a comfortable world.

So once again I say fuck ‘em all, to hell with them.


Ship in a Bottle

What delicate hands it takes
To place a ship within a glass bottle.
Sails extended after the final placement,
Then corked and sealed forever in a miniature prison.

There is no foreseeable escape from the world of glass,
That ship will never sail on open waters,
If a storm does rage, its power
Will be nothing but a deafened silence.

The captain of that ship is without a mission,
His sextet is useless, the North Star is but a
Fairy light twinkling for its own indulgence.
Deckhands are not homesick, never seasick,
For they know nothing of home or sea.

The only offered escape from such a vacuumed existence,
Is to smash the glass, shattering the bottle,
Destroying the delicate vessel inside,
Merely putting an end to an impossible way of life,
No problem solved, no real resolution.

But just as that bottle is broken,
Another delicate hand, gently maneuvers
Another ship within a glass bottle,
And at the very last moment, extends the sails
And places the fated cork, to begin again a silent life.


Poor Old Georgie Best

“Poor old Johnny Ray,” said Dixie’s Midnight Runners,
What about Poor old Georgie Best, the Belfast Lad?

He was sticking them in the net when I was born,
But there were too many distractions,
couldn’t keep his eye on the ball.
A fallen hero they call people like that,
Greatness squandered through a bottle.
Five years of magic it could have been twenty.

They’ve all been calling in requests for ya,
Singing your praises and Pele says you’re the best.

Your passing inspired me to get the boots out
And head to the park with my dog Guinness.
I kicked the ball up and down, tried a few flash moves,
The dog chased after me and the cold bit my face,
I’m out of shape, so I hobbled back to the car when a few
Youths came along looking for a game.

They say you had a new liver, a new life and you spent that one too.
Sure, if that’s the way your star shines, what are you gonna do,
You can only be the man you are, what’s the point in being someone else?
You could have easily ended up a fucking mess in Belfast with 12 waynes and
A job down Harland and Wolf; instead you took on the world and nearly fucking
Beat them at their own game, so to hell with the be-grudgers.
You’re the best Georgie Best.

History will polish up your blemishes and you’ll be remembered as a fine man,
And you deserve it too.
We’ll never know what went on in that head of yours,
But we can guess, and you had your reasons.
A drunkard and a womanizer, a footballer and a legend, a man and a myth,
Man United and Northern Ireland will put your name on jerseys and tomorrow’s Youth
Will wear them and when they pick teams and names
Out on the field at the back of the houses
I’m sure you’ll be among the names they choose,
He shoots, he scores, one nil, Georgie Best.



Flare Over St. John’s

Dad saw the flare from Dunkineely,
On his way back from work;
He didn’t think much of it,
But called it into the Coast Guard.

A few weeks later a big black Vauxhall
Pulled-up in front of the house,
They asked me if “Charlie Vial” was in,
I said I’d go get him.

He was wearing a black leather jacket,
And his bearded face looked tired;
She too wore a black leather jacket,
But hers looked too long, ill fitting,
Like she was wearing it because she had to,
She didn’t look tired, but sad.

Dad told me to make tea,
While they all went into the living room,
With the fake bamboo wallpaper.
Everyone held the mugs between their knees
With their hands cupped around.

They all stared into the watery tea,
A few words spoken, no answers from the mugs:
“So, you saw the flare?”
“Yeah, just over St. John’s”

When they left I asked Dad
“What was all that about?”
He said the flare was from
A Northern Irish Fishing boat,
Her brother was on it
And no-one survived.



Box of Kittens

Dad got the double-barreled shotgun,
The one Granda gave him with
The nice mahogany case
And filled his pocket with cartridges.

I helped him put the cat and all the kittens
In the box and carried it up the backyard,
And over the ditch into Danny’s field.

I could hear the mammy cat
And all the kittens scratching at the sides
Of the box as I laid it on the ground
And stood back.

Dad closed the shotgun from
The ‘broke’ position and fired
Directly, point-blank-range.

The box blew apart, disintegrated,
And kittens ran everywhere,
Dad fired again,
Reloaded quickly,
Like he was shooting clay pigeons,
Pivoted quickly, aimed, fired again:
After another reload all the kittens
And the mammy cat were dead:

We walked back to the house in silence
And said nothing to no-one.

The Brown Bread Brigade

Mum wasn’t officially a member of the Brown Bread Brigade. It was more of a professional association, as there was plenty of crossover between them and the Killybegs Writer’s Group. But to Dad there was little more than a crust in the difference and he used the term synonymous with both groups.

The Brown Bread Brigade were crusty people as most would describe them, not saying they weren’t nice, most of them were very nice, but they all had that crusty element that separated them from true poets and writers, like the woolen jumpers that looked like they belonged to Scandinavian fishermen and the un-kept hair that was always tied back with a rubber band. But I suppose the main difference was that they liked to bake bread more than they liked to write poetry. I remember having some brown bread baked by one of Mum’s friend’s and it was great, not as great as Granny’s, but not bad with a slab of butter and jam on it.

Ester was the leader of the Brown Bread Brigade as far as I could tell. She used to live up above Melly’s Chip Shop, next door to Tony Deany’s. She was always very friendly to Tony and me and her husband (Man friend, I don’t know if Brown Bread Brigade people were allowed to marry, kind of went against the grain of the feminist side of the culture) let us sit on his motorbike that had the Isle of Man TT sticker on it.

Then there was Miffy, her understudy. She lived with Geraldine for a while, who was considered a member of the Brown Bread Brigade, but later she went over to the writer’s side full time. Miffy was very pretty when she was young and we were kids. She went out with Damien Dowds that lived next door to us when we were up St. Cummin’s Hill. Anyway, she was far too good looking to be hiding behind 80lbs of wool and baking bread. I wonder if she’s still in the Brigade?

I don’t know what Dad had against the Brown Bread Brigade, but whenever he and Mum were having a row, sooner or later the phrase “You and that fucking Brown Bread Brigade, why don’t you all just fuck off!” would pop up out of nowhere. There didn’t seem to be any harm in them as far as I was concerned, so what if they were a little new age and crusty.

I was a little too young to understand them completely at the time, but now looking back I can see they had a great way of life; living on the edge of accepted society, not quite Moonies or Hippies, they were their own kind of outsider. They took this quite literally when they moved out to St. John’s Point, a peninsula jutting six miles out into the Atlantic Ocean. I can’t remember if the house was Ester’s or Miffy’s, but I remember both of them being there and my Aunt Geraldine was sunbathing naked down the back of the house. However, we were more interested in the front of the house, where that summer a school of porpoise came close to the coast and for the good shelter offered by the Point and the rich feeding grounds, they decided to stay for a while. It was amazing to watch those giant mammals playing in the ocean like it was some kind of school yard or playground. The docile cows in the fields looked on at them thinking “fucking edgets, would you look at them fecking around like there’s no tomorrow.” Cows are very somber animals and need to relax if you ask me. They could learn a thing or two from the porpoise.

I am not sure if any of them actually worked full time or not (I’m talking about the Brown Bread folks now not the cows), or if they just lived on the dole and government allowances, maybe that’s what pissed Dad off about them. I know that Miffy went to put her fisherman’s jumper to good use and fished on my Uncle Kevin’s boat the Rose De Vore for a while. So did my cousin Lynn Murphy after she got her skipper’s ticket, but I don’t think the Brown Bread Brigade was a good fit for her.

I always liked the sound of the name “The Brown Bread Brigade.” Dad’s use of the word kind of gave them authority and validation. The only other brigade I knew growing up in Killybegs was the Fire Brigade, but as far as I know the Brown Bread Brigade didn’t have a fire engine and were not called out to chimney fires as much. Could you imagine five crusties running up the main street in Killybegs, past Gallagher’s shop and McHugh’s Video shop with loaves in arm and woolly jumpers flaying in the wind shouting: “Out of the way people, we got bread, we got brown bread!” Dogs would bark and kids would cheer them on and old women would complain that they were going too fast and sure it wasn’t like the whole house was on fire.

fecking loaf in the lake and kills a duck. I literally choked on the dentist’s instruments I laughed so hard.

The boy’s mother was the ultimate Brown Bread Brigade member. She was a total save the whales candidate with her “I hate the world ‘cause the world hates me” attitude and over sized woolly jumper! Christ, can you remember the clothes she sent her kid to school in? But then it’s sad when they get home and the mother has tried to kill herself, which made me stop laughing and think about my own mother.

The kid in the movie, Marcus, reminds me of my younger brother Bruce when he was that age. Although Bruce would never sing Killing me Softly out of key, with his eyes closed, but in other ways the kid and Bruce were alike. Both as young boys had mothers who were lost to them and to themselves. Both were gentle, good natured boys with a love of music. Genuine in their gratefulness, like getting the crappy socks for Christmas and when the rest of us would be like “ah fuck great, they’ll go fantastic with my hand knitted shitty scarf” they be like “thanks, I’ll get great use out of them” and actually mean it. I think it was hardest on Bruce to lose his mother, he was the most in need of her, and the sad fucking part of it is that he lost her years before she died.

Mum might not have worn the woolly jumpers all the time, but she definitely had the inclination, she was more of an all-day in pajamas person. When the time came and mum never got out of her pajamas it was like trying to talk to a brick wall, except you could get more response out of the wall than you could out of mum when she was in that one dimensional phase. Drove me fucking nuts. You could never have shouted loud enough that she would hear you. Just nod the head and avert the eyes. She didn’t deserve all the self pity she drowned herself in. There was still too much love floating around her, the buoy was there, all she had to do was grab hold.

Now that I think of it Mum could never have been a full fledged Brown Bread Brigade member, ‘because she like the mother in About a Boy, couldn’t bake for shit.

Friday Nights at Granny’s

Friday nights were always the best at Granny’s house. Derek and I would be off school for the whole weekend on Friday afternoon; I was finished before Derek at 2 o’clock ‘cause I was a whole fourteen months younger and baby-infants and high-infants always got out at two. The thought even of having to stay till three scared me and I wanted to get off school at 2 o’clock forever. Of course, as I got older I had to stay later.

I’d rush home from the Nial Mhor National School, down the hill by the Fire Brigade, up the Back Street and past the Bank of Ireland. We nearly always had to stop to play at the window of Thornton’s, even though they closed down a long time ago. Their window holds magic and not just for children either, because I’ve seen adults play on it when they get drunk – and I’ve been one of those drunk adults.

You have to press your face flat up against the window and look down to the end of it, with one eye closed, where one of your friends would be standing, lifting his left leg and waving his left arm, bobbing his head to and fro and by some crazy law of refraction you are able to see another image perfectly symmetrical to the other and it moves exactly the same except on the other plane and it appeares as one body moving the same way in two directions at once. Cool.

This joviality usually lasted for five or ten minutes depending upon the creativity of the performers. I’d say “see you later” to Declan or call him “Decky” or “Colonel Decker” when I got to the Sail Inn. I’d go up The Hill and he’d go on up to Conlin Road, he lived up past Curan’s shop, next door to Granny’s house, we didn’t walk all the way home together.

I’d trek up Stony Batter with Ciaran and John Martin and some other stragglers and Patrick Caraban but he was younger than us and he mother was English and his dad was an engineer or something. And even though he was younger, we liked him and with his round head and red hair I found him quite interesting, everyone in my family had dark hair and angular features, he didn’t look like any of them.

Without fail, at the top of Stony Batter, John James Burke, John Martin’s father, would be there to relieve us of our ‘mala scoiles’ (school bags in Irish). He must have been the strongest man in the world ‘cause just one bag nearly broke my back with all the copy books and school books and work books and pencils and rubbers and toppers and crusted pieces of bread. But no bother to John James, he took eight or ten bags and carried them the whole way up St. Cummins Hill, which was the steepest hill for miles and miles around. From the half way point you could turn around and see a spectacular view of the harbor with all the fishing boats tied up at the pier, you could see men driving forklifts in and out of the auction hall and the gulls would be shitting all over the place as they swooped down to snatch a stray fish fallen from a box. Beyond that you could see all the big houses over in Ben Roe and beyond that you could see all the way over to Ballyshannon and Bundoran, but you could see them better at night when their lights twinkled like fairy lights on a Christmas tree.

Recently, the County Council had put in a railing that ran all the way up the steepest part of the hill and we used it to drag ourselves up the bastard of an incline. John Martin was real proud of his Dad for carrying the bags. I wondered why my father never carried the bags.

At the top of the Hill, which wasn’t really the top at all, just the beginning of even more hill, was the first house, the Friel’s house. The grey hounds would be barking at us and the donkey tied to the ESB pole would be braying at us and old Eddy Friel, if he was not yet too drunk would be shouting at us and Leo would say hello.

Leo was Derek’s friend and even though he was older than Derek he still talked to me and even played with me, but I was still scared of him. Their house was no. 18 and ours was no. 14 and other people called him a tinker, but I liked him and his older sister babysat us. But I didn’t like the way their house smelled, it reminded me of Jayes Fluid and once I helped carry a baby’s cot for a new baby in the house and I stuck my hand in cat shit, I didn’t like going in the house after that.
At our house John James would unload my school bag and I would go into the house to start watching Bosco or anything else that was on Bog 1 or Bog 2, the names we called the Irish television channels and I’d wait for Derek to come home. Mam would make me a cup of tea and sometimes give me a treat if Derek wasn’t home yet. But my sister Jenny would have to have the same ‘cause she was she was younger and would have a tantrum if she didn’t get what she wanted.

There was a giant birdcage on top of the TV with budgies and cockatiels in it, spitting sunflowers seeds onto the floor. I use to love watching Mam hover them up, it was amazing to see the piles of seeds instantly disappear, sucked up into the Nilfisk. When I was able to, I hovered them myself, it was totally fascinating to see them instantly disappear, it was as near to magic that we got on our house.
When Derek got home Mam would nag us to get ready for staying over at Granny’s, ‘cause we wouldn’t leave the TV alone. So we grabbed the rough sacs and packed pajamas for after our bath and clothes for Saturday because Granda might take us to Donegal or Sligo.

In those days we only got one bath a week and it was always on Friday night, no matter if we were at home or at Granny’s, unless we were at Paddy’s then we didn’t get one at all ‘cause they didn’t have running water. So it became something of an institution among all the people I knew in Killybegs to get really cleaned up on Friday nights and try to stay half-way decent till the following Friday, even if they had hot water all the time and a shower in the house.

We had no car and Dad was always out fishing or working so we walked by ourselves down to Granny’s. He worked a lot since he stopped drinking and now we had a phone and a video and hardly anyone else had those up The Hill. John Martin told Mam that “I had the life of Riley.”

If it wasn’t raining and if we were brave enough we’d go the short cut by The Circle and come out the back of Emerald Park soccer pitch, and come in the back way by Granda’s workshop. But mostly it was raining and we weren’t brave enough cause of the Murrin twins and the Kerry brothers who lived around The Circle. They would try to bully us, they were much older than us and there was nothing we could do. So we’d end up going down St. Cummins Hill and around by the cottages. The cottages were just houses that looked like ours, only they were older and nicer. St. Cummins Hill was very new and we were one of the first families to move into it after it was built. Granny’s house was on Conlin Road, although some argued, like Stephen Laferty, that it was actually Marine Drive ‘cause there was a green sign that said so, like the one that said St. Cummins Hill. But there was no sign for the Circle, so I guess they were part of Cummins Hill too even if we didn’t like them to be. But we all called it Conlin Road; me, Derek, Declan, Mam and even Granny and Granda. Conlin Road was even older than the cottages and some houses had big trees in the front and back gardens.

Granny’s house had the biggest trees and the most beautiful gardens. They’d won lots of trophies for her and she gave the trophies to me and Derek when she didn’t want them anymore. Dad was looking at the one she gave me and the base fell off, it probably wasn’t his fault, but he’d broken my Transformer on Christmas the year before trying to make it into a robot and this Christmas he broke my huge black Gobot Jeep. I thought he was trying to break my stuff and I cried, but I guess they were just accidents.

When you walked up No. 64, you’d get the most beautiful smells from all the flowers and the cherry blossom trees that had coconut shells hanging from it. The shells were used to feed the birds, Granny would put left over fat and lard into them and the birds would go crazy hanging from them and eating the delicious lard. Granny’s garden always had tons of birds in it, more than any other garden in the whole world. There was on rock in it, brought from St. John’s Point years ago, that had a depression in it and collected rain water, the birds used it as a bath and it was amazing to see them playing in it, like they knew it was Friday and time for a bath.

Granny was usually in the garden pulling weeds wearing yellow or pink Marigold rubber gloves and had a trowel in her hand. She loved her garden and it showed by the beautiful growth. Anything Granny loved; grew very well.

She’d greet us with a big hug, she never liked to kiss children ‘cause you just never knew who had a dirty, disgusting old cole-sore and especially she didn’t like people kissing babies. She said that’s why Kenneth Murphy always had a cole-sore ‘cause someone kissed him when he was a baby and now he always has one.

We’d all go in the house and throw our stuff in Magella’s old room. She was now living in Aileen and Pat’s old room and we’d go in there even though we were told not to and she had pictures of naked women on the walls. Her room was very exotic, we learned that word from Mam, and interesting, we loved to explore it. There was an old clog covered in barnacles that rested on a shelf, we were told Kevin, her boyfriend, lost it and when they found it, all the barnacles had grown on it. There was also a peacock’s feather in a vase and we would tickle our faces with it, but the naked ladies always took the most of our interest. There was one lady inside a glass bubble and it looked like she was on the moon and all alone and I wanted to be in there with her and kiss her, then she wouldn’t be alone at all. Derek liked the one of the lady swimming naked on her back, the sun was setting on her and she glowed red.

Her old room was not quite as exotic but there were still plenty of fun, cool things to root through, like the wooden box that had old Irish money and English money in it, along with postcards and fancy soaps that smelled great. There was a calendar with a blue train on it, but it wasn’t Magella’s, ‘cause we were there when Granny and Granda got it in Sligo at the train station and Kenneth Murphy stepped on the side of the real blue train and Granda told him not to and people thought he and Lynn were sisters ‘cause they had the same furry gold colored coats and Santa gave him a girl’s present. That made him very mad and when we teased him about it he tried to beat-up me and my cousin Paddy.

Granny would tell us that dinner was at half-six and to bring a cup of tea out to Granda in the work shop. Granda would be in the office with Bruce the dog at his feet. Grand was always wild excited to see us and no matter how busy he was he’d get up and bring us into the part of the workshop with all the tools and where his inventions were and where Miles and Johnny worked. Johnny was a “useless bollocks” Granny said and Miles was a great young fella from down Glenties way. She said Johnny was always stinking up her bathroom. If a new order of equipment had come in then the big box under the bench would be full of the best boxes and bubble paper. Derek and I would root through it until we found what we wanted, making sure to shake off the cigarette ashes that Johnny flicked in there.

Then we would say we were off to the Cunnigham’s, Declan and Kevin’s house, which Granny and Granda and even Mam called The Boyle’s. They called it that ‘cause Una Cunnigham, their mother, was Una Boyle before she married Colm Cunnigham and Granny and the rest couldn’t get use to the name change for the house, ‘cause the house was there longer than they were married.

Declan was my age but Kevin was a year older than Derek, but he still played with us when his own friends were not around, some of them were mean and they didn’t like our cousin Kenneth at all. I hated being around Kenneth when people came to bully him, ‘cause they’d pick on us too and when Kenneth wasn’t there they usually left us alone.

After playing with Declan and Kevin and having dinner and taking a bath and getting dressed in warm clothes by the coal fire, it would be late enough to turn on Channel 4 and watch horror movies. Borris Karlov and Long Chenny were the two names that Granny would say and sure enough one of them would be in the movie every Friday night. I liked the Werewolf movies best if all, but I didn’t like the Mummy movies so much. Derek and I couldn’t figure out why the hell the screaming woman didn’t just run away and damn those tannin leaves, ‘powerful cup of tea’ as Granda would say. Dracula ones were good too, but no matter how he died at the end, he would be back the next week, leading the Werewolf and Frankenstein in some crazy scheme to chase after the stupid screaming girl again; run for Christ sakes, run!

Granda would fall asleep in his chair and Granny would wake him up to go to bed and she’d tell us not to stay up too late, but of course we did. We stayed up until all the channels closed for the night. We got to hear the Irish national anthem and the British national anthem and then there was just fuzz. We’d silently creep up the creaking stairs and jump into our cold bed, but then we’d feel a warmth at the end of the bed. Granny had put hot water bottles in the bed for us and we stopped shivering as soon as we warmed up enough. There was a book on the side of the bed and we’d look at the pictures in it for a while. The Titanic was in there and The Lusitanian and a giant squid, the book was called Forgotten Titans or something like that. By then our eyes were getting very sleepy and Derek would make me get up and turn the light off and I would try to make it back to bed in the dark without knocking the pee bucket over. There was no upstairs toilet so you had to pee in a bucket when you had to pee at night. I often missed the bucket and peed on the floor and on my hand.

I would always wake before Derek the next morning ‘cause I knew Transformers was on TV and you had to get up good and early to catch the first part of the show, but I’d also watch The Pink Panther on Anything Goes and The Gobots, Centurions and He-Man. I loved it when it was just me in the sitting room and I could be in control of the television and nobody could tell me what to do. Before I turned on the television the room would be very silent and there was a slight feeling of warmth from the dead ashes in the fire and the only thing that broke the silence was the tick-tock of the broken coo-coo clock that always ran five minutes fast. There was a big painting of Granda above the mantle piece in his hunting jacket and there was a gun up on the wall and the cabinets were filled with Granny’s antiques that Derek loved. Granny’s house was much nicer than our and I loved it there.

Then the rest of the house would be waking-up after nine and Derek would come down and try to change the channel and Granny would make us cereal with warm milk and bananas and Granda would be up for his tea and then go down the town for the paper and after that out to the office.

If we were lucky Granda would need to make a run over to Sligo to pick up rough sacs for making his electric fishers. Granda had a huge blue Ford Granada and we would lie on the floor in the back when we got tired. Once I was leaning in the middle when I was told not to and Granda had to hit the brakes very hard and I hit my face on the dash, so I learned never to do that again.

Even when we were going to Sligo, Granda would stop in Doherty’s Fishing Tackle Shop in Donegal Town and talk to the owner for a while and maybe buy us a pen knife or a torch. Granny would tell him not to be too long as she wanted to go to Dunne’s when we got to Sligo. She had to buy a 3.99 chicken for Sunday dinner.

Derek and I played a game along the road counting the different makes of cars and there was always more Fords than anything else. Star cars were popular too, Granda called them Mercedes’. When we weren’t playing the game I stared out the window and imagined that I had a huge blade sticking out of the car and as we passed all the trees and telephone poles I was slicing them down, but I’d make sure to lift the blade when we buzzed past a house. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

You could see a Princess’s Castle when you drove up the hill before Kelly’s garage outside of Mount Charles. Granda told us that Rupunzel lived there and we always wanted to go up there, but nobody ever took us. So it had to remain a castle of our imagination, like the girl on the moon in the glass bubble.

Sometimes we’d call in to see our rich uncle Barry in Mount Charles. He owned a giant mansion down by the sea and it had a giant conquer tree beside it and we could dig around looking for chestnuts and collect as many as we could find. We didn’t really know our cousins, who lived there, but we loved playing on their toys, they had so many toys and we were all very jealous of them and my aunt Madge wasn’t very nice to us and Granny didn’t like her either.

When we got back to Killybegs after being in Sligo all day and we were well behaved, then we were invited to stay another night at Granny’s, even though she might be going to Bingo out in Dunkineely or down in Ardara. Granda would go down to Melly’s and buy us fish and chips, smothered in salt and vinegar and we’d eat it at the little table in the sitting room and watch the television.

Then when we were all cleaned up Declan would call on the phone and he’d be allowed to come over. Me, him, Derek and Granda would get out the Technic Lego and make things. I only knew how to make the same rally car over and over again, but it had an electric motor and it was very fun to play with. Derek had the yellow bricks and they had pneumatic pumps and he kept trying to make a digger, but it was very hard and didn’t look like much fun compared to my electric rally car. Declan was very skilled at making things with the lego and even had his own tool box out in his father’s shed and made things with us in Granda’s work shop. Granda showed us how to make catamaran boats with sails and we sailed them out at Fintra beach and Declan’s was the best one. He had Lego that you could make a fire station with and when we completed the station Granda took a picture of it.

When Granny got back from bingo Declan went on up home ‘cause he didn’t like to stay over. Granny told us we had to go to bed earlier ‘because we had to get up for Mass in the morning. We didn’t have to go to Mass when we were at home, but Granny made sure we went with her and we sat up the front, just one row back from the very front. I got to see lots of people from school at Mass and I even got to see a girl I liked, but she didn’t know I liked her and I was too shy to tell her. I often imagined she was the girl inside the bubble that was all alone on the moon and I was there to kiss her and make sure she was not alone. But she was rich and everyone knew her and I was not and nobody knew me.

Near the end of mass when the priest gave out communion I had to sit by myself for a few minutes, ‘cause Derek had just made his first holy communion and he went up with Granny and Ganda and the Murphy’s to receive communion. He made loads of money at his communion and I was excited to make mine next year, so I didn’t have to sit and I could go up in the line with everyone else and I would have loads of money.

After mass we got some pocket money to go to Molloy’s sweet shop and Granny went on home with Granda in the car to get the dinner finished. At Molly’s you could ether get ice-cream put onto a square cone with a knife or a quarter pound of canned sweets or boiled sweets. Cola-cubes were great but they stuck together in your pocket and bon-bons looked good but didn’t taste too good. If I couldn’t decide then I got a cone. There was a stack of newspapers on a small table by the chocolate bars and I always looked through to see if I could find the one with Dad’s name on it. If it wasn’t there then he was already up and about and if it was still there then I knew he was going to be in soon. Sometimes he came in when we were trying to make our minds up and he’d give us some more pocket money and you could get a can of smack pineapple or cola to go with your sweets or ice-cream.

Everybody in our whole family came to Sunday dinner at Granny’s house. The whole house smelled like food and it was a lovely smell. She’d have the best roast potatoes and corn and mushy peas, which I didn’t like, and stuffing. There was always a fight to see who’d get the leg and Mam would say to Dad, “Jaysus I wish your father would invent a chicken with ten legs.” My Granda Vial, who I didn’t really know, was a geneticist, but I didn’t know what that meant, but he lived in Dublin and worked in a big office.

Mam would tell us that we had to come home soon and we’d beg her to let us stay longer, but she’d remind us that we had school in the morning and we still had to do our homework and if we were really good then we could come and stay with Granny next Friday or go to Aidan and Francis’s house in Carrick to see Paddy. We wouldn’t argue and when we were full we’d go out the back to play and watch a game of football in Emerald Park.

If there wasn’t a game of football, then after we were finished playing, Derek and I would get our things at Granny’s and slowly walk back up the Hill to home and go back to our other life at 14 St. Cummins Hill. I loved my life better at 64 Conlin Road, but that was only my weekend life, the rest of the week was my real life and by Wednesday I loved that life just as much, until Friday came along again. And it was warm pajamas and roast potatoes and trips to Sligo and Lego and Vampires and Frankenstein and stupid Mummies and even more stupid screaming girls that wouldn’t run away. Damn those tannin leaves, powerful cup of tea.

Happy New Year

It’s that time of the year again when you have to work through all the holidays and your wife and friends or boyfriends or girlfriends have the night off and you feel like you are the only one in the whole world without the night off.

You smile your way through Thanksgiving, then sarcastically laugh your way past Christmas Eve and Christmas Day “Another refill? Coming right away sir, NGFY!” Then New Year’s Even comes along and you had to work on your birthday the day before and you are at your wit’s end and you thank God for the small mercy that the boss opened some of the cheapest sparkling in the house to share with the staff and as you count down “5,4,3,2,1….” You start counting down the hours till your shift ends and you can go home, open a special bottle of wine you’ve been saving all year and settling in with the misses at the God awful hour of 3am.

But then seconds before they all scream “Happy New Year” your wife staggers in the door, red faced not from the cold but from a Magnum of Concha Y Toro bucket wine and instead of hurrah, you think “ah fuck!” You can see the eyes are gone and she is trying to drag you out of work to come party with her, but you know you’ve still got lots to do before you can leave and she starts nagging and walks off in a stormer. You’ve to go after her and tell her, “Hey I’m still at work, do you mind, sit in the bar and I’ll be right with you.” An hour passes and she keeps filling up at the bar and finally you are ready to take her home. But you’re not going home yet, the party is still going on at her sister’s house and she wants you to be with everybody else and you try to explain that you are tired and don’t want to go, but you are reminded that she hangs out with your friends “all the time.” So you go to her sister’s house and she can hardly talk and everybody there is ready for bed and you make small talk and you turn around and your wife is gone.

You find her outside trying to walk down Independence Ave at two o’clock in the bloody morning and you have to chase after her less a drug addict or prostitute tries to sell her something. Then she falls down and you have to carry her back to the car and you hope she just passes out in the back seat, but as you are driving down I-35 she stirs awake and opens the back door to get out. So you’ve one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on her arm and you’re screaming at her to close the door “fer fuck’s sake.” She tells you to leave her alone, ‘cause you’re in the wrong, it’s her right to open the car door and get out on I-35 at 70 miles an hour.

Eventually you get into the driveway of your house and she falls down nearly killing herself on the edge of the pavement and it’s your fault again. Then you get inside and the dogs have shit in the hallway ‘cause she never let them out earlier in the day and started celebrating a tad too early. So the house smells of shit and she starts crying and you tell her to ignore it and you’ll clean it up and for her to just lie down and take it easy.

You find her a receptacle to barf up into and get her a glass of water and fix up the bedroom for her so she can pass out safely and you can unwind, take your work clothes off have a New Year’s Eve beer for yourself and try and save some sanity from the night.

Then you turn around and there is shit all over the house! She has grabbed the dog blanket with runny shit on it and dragged it through the house and down into the basement and the washing machine is going full blast. You find her in the basement (still crying about the smell of shit) but now the washing machine is about to blow up ‘cause she over stuffed it with shitty dog blankets and the motor has ripped the drum off it’s base and the machine is full of shitty blankets and shitty water. Ahhh, you scream for God’s sake go to bed and leave the fucking shit alone!

After a struggle you get her to bed sans the shit on her pants, and it’s after three thirty in the morning and now you’ve to start cleaning up the shit that is smeared on the wall on the stairs and just about every where. So instead of feeling like shit, you now smell like shit.

After a shower you lay on the couch, crack open a beer, sit back, take one sip and completely pass out from exhaustion, Happy Fucking New Year. Let’s do this again next year.

Sheriff Bewler’s Day Off

Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.

Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!

Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time: what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’

Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.

Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.

He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.

11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.

With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.

Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.

1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.

His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.

The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.

His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.

Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.

Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.

He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.

He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.

Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.

“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!

He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.

When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.

Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.

There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”

Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.


Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed, or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.

Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!

Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’

Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.

Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.

He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.

11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.

With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.

Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.

1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.

His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.

The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.

His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.

Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.

Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.

He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.

He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.

Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.

“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!

He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.

When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.

Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.

There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”

Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.

Disclaimer

A lot of these stories are true ones. The memory of growing-up in and around Killybegs. When you hold a mirror up to small communities, sometimes there are those who don't like the reflection. Capote knew this only too well.

If you find the refraction just a little too much and would like the angle of incidence changed in your favor, please email me at georgevial@hotmail.com and I will be happy to make a name change here or there.

George Vial

Sketch of a Midwestern Boy

His Dad was of all-American blood, those that had been here three generations or more, but his mother was the daughter of a recent German immigrant. She grew up bi-lingual and used that to her advantage; teaching high school German for the past nineteen years.

She met his dad when she was in college and he just a boy, a private in the Army. Over the years they moved as the military dictated and while stationed on a base in Germany, Frank was born.

Frank Benson, most people called him little Frankie, looked like his father, with his mother’s diminutive stance. He was the apple of both their eyes: the perfect child in every sense.

Earned his Eagle badge at twelve, wrestled in grade school, went to state in high school and was at church every Sunday, nestled between his mom and dad and his younger brother and sister flanked their sides.

The summer he finished high school he was a church camp counselor, praised Jesus and prayed his heart out to the kids. He turned eighteen in June and his Daddy was made Full Colonel. The summer passed in religious bliss except when his Daddy called him from the airport and he couldn’t come to pick him up.

When he went home that Sunday afternoon for lunch his Dad didn’t speak to him, just looked at him with disapproving eyes. Frankie weakly gestured “I couldn’t come, I couldn’t get permission.” But it wasn’t enough.

In August, college started, he went to the better of the state school. Joined a fraternity and wrestled as a freshman. But that was a different league and intramural sports like soccer, Frisbee and running took their place. Average grades were obtained and the Colonel wasn’t happy. They weren’t good enough.

The summer came quick and once again he was a counselor at the church camp, surrounded by other youths blinded by their euphoric sense of righteousness. Even alone one night with a female counselor and she sucked his cock, it was all in the name of Jesus. Every time they did anything it was in the name of Jesus.

After going out to a restaurant one evening, Frankie and several other counselors, that had the night off in the name of Jesus, were stopped by two Buddhists spreading their word.

Frankie and another girl stopped to listen, the others told them to come on. Later, back at the staff-house a girl was crying, screaming quietly that Frankie wanted to listen to the heathen. A thought occurred to Frankie and he asked why couldn’t they both be right as long as they both believed in what they were saying? That only brought condemnation and several people prayed that he’d find his way back to Jesus. As not to upset anymore people Frankie stopped talking about the Buddhists and told them all that he was back with Jesus. The crying stopped.

During his sophomore year he met a girl that didn’t suck his dick for Jesus, she did it for herself and when they had sex it was for herself too. He found alcohol didn’t suit him too well and marijuana gave him a great sense of euphoria, which he’d never attained from prayer.

He cared less about his grades and even less about what the Colonel thought. His fraternity was distant to him and he only met the other Christians to play a friendly game of soccer, but off course, they couldn’t even kick-off without the blessing from big J.

When summer came along the Director of the church camp decided to make him a leader. All summer he was apart from the children, apart from the other counselors. He belonged to the politics that allowed everyone else to enjoy their religious bliss. By the time August came he felt empty inside and Jesus was not his friend: He often called, but Jesus was not at home.

In his Junior year he took a class in World Religions and found the Tao to his liking. He loved the idea of Karma and Chi and the Confucian Code was very human and attainable, unlike the blind faith he’d been fed on Sunday mornings as the breakfast of his childhood.

The new ideas were not very welcome at home. The Colonel warned him not to become a”Fucking Commi’.” His mother told him it was all right to explore new ideas as she had recently become a vegetarian and Jesus didn’t mind.

The other boys in his fraternity forgot he even belonged, except when dues were owed. He found his niche among the kids that he’d always believed were going to hell. Beer, BMX biking, free style walking and pot were the common bonds and what a simple society they made. The Chi was good.

He passed in and out of the church camp that summer as a volunteer because he had classes to retake and places to see. He didn’t mind ‘cause it kept the colonel happy and him free.

His senior year was a blur; it was just one big going away party. They started practicing in August and by May they had it perfected. He walked, Frankie Richard Benson, with no honors or distinctions, with a degree in the liberal arts. The Colonel asked what the hell he was going to do with that. He said he didn’t know, maybe he’d teach. “Teach what?”
“Teach Life!…”

He was allowed to stay at home ‘till August. So until then he worked in the kitchens of the church camp. That way he didn’t have to suffer Jesus looking in on everything he did.

At night when the kitchen was all cleaned up, he and the kitchen guy would go drinking or take a drive down to Lawrence and hang out with his little brother Tom. Tom had had gone through a much more quiet revolution of rebellion than that of Frankie, he slipped under the Colonel’s radar: it was what the first born son did that counted.

The Director of the church camp said he was walking a very thin line and if he cared to cross it he could. And he did. The Director fired him and the Colonel kicked him out of the house.

He went to live with Tom and got a job as a teacher’s assistant at a high school. His car broke down in the winter. The Colonel waited to be asked for help, but instead after a few beers, Frankie, Tom and a few friends took it apart with baseballs bats and a broomstick.

He caught the bus ‘till school went out for the summer, then bought a motorcycle, grew a beard and decided to see America.

That summer he didn’t call home, just a post-card once to say all was well in California. He didn’t need Jesus to ride pillion. He just rode where he Chi, his Karma, his Tao, his own sense of being liked. He saw everything he wanted to see, did everything he wanted and talked to whoever. This was his first season as a man of his own making: not a hollow shell of someone else’s design.

The Great Shoe-off of 2001

Smoke filled the room, music sounded off the crowded walls, voices talked over voices with festive cheers, and glasses clanked and drink spilled joyously on the floor, the bar, people’s heads, just about anything at all.

Down the very back corner a crowd had gathered, they were exhibiting great mirth and joviality. A television set above their heads was showing the highlights of the day’s games, only a few eyes darted up to catch the results, all the others were head first into their pints. They were telling jokes, slapping backs and throwing insults. A rather cosmopolitan group it was, men, women, dark heads, fair heads, tall folks and short folks, laughing folks and serious folks, loud and quiet, a little bit of all sides of life.

Suddenly, a pint toppled over, two men pushed back their stools and glared at each other. Stone, granite cold were their eyes, hands flared out to their sides motionless as two desperadoes at high noon. Neither wavered, neither faltered, the bar became silent, members of the immediate crowd shouted “It’s a Shoe-off, we’ve got a Shoe-off here people!”

The two kept their eyes fixed waiting for the other to make the first move. The tall blond man, they called him the Viking, for his Scandinavian appearance, even though he spoke with the thickest Irish brogue you ever heard. His knees moved, just a twitch, then another deeper motion, then he pulled his feet up off the ground and showed his trickery; one shoe hanging off the foot of the other. A great move, not a match winning move, but the gathered people could tell they were not dealing with a novice of the Shoe-Off.

Now the other man took his turn, he went by the name of Sells, as he sold things, not very original, but then who the hell makes the rules of nicknames, in that game their can be no limits, although there should be with some of the names you hear about this place. Sells knew he had to make his first move count, he had to draw first blood as it were. This was not an adversary to toy with, so digging deep into his reserve from many an epic Shoe-off in the past he closed his eyes and mediated. He blocked out the people around him, the television, even George’s offer to buy the next round and that never happens. Sells had become one with the shoe.

As if by an invisible hand his shoes slipped off his feet and lay perfectly parallel to each other about five inches in front of his body. Then he stood up from his stool, eyes still closed and genuflected as if in the deepest prayer of austerity. The crowd gasped for now The Shoes were exactly where his knees would have hit the ground giving the perfect resemblance of one who’s feet are at their knees, like some kind of carnival freak and even demonstrated by taking a few steps forward on his truncated legs. Finally Sells opened his eyes to receive the acknowledgment he deserved from the people about him.

“Beat that ya big Viking feck! and George, I’ll have that drink now.”

All eyes fell to the Viking, what could he do to beat that, people began to mumble and turn away, the Shoe-off looked to be over. The talk picked up and drinking recommenced. Sells was about to shout in victory when he saw the Viking go into what could only be a spasm. He shook his head and hands, then clenched his fists tight and became still, stretched out his long legs, pointed his toes inwards. The hush fell to the amazed crowd, what could this man do to beat the impressive knees-with-feet move?

With the toes turned inwards he slowly lowered his feet to the ground and began to wiggle his feet out of his shoes with the precision of a surgeon. Where the shoes had come together on the ground they made a perfect triangle and now with the feet removed they stood alone, like some Celtic monument to the Feet Gods. And there it was the perfect shoe-move. Men choked on their pints, the women flushed and felt queer in their breasts. The Viking looked up with what could only be called the “eye of the champion.”

A voice called out from the audience announcing “Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we have a winner, a new Shoe-off King, you’re the man big fella and by the way how tall are ya?”

Emerging Man

Waking, dry mouthed from the night’s excesses Conor lifts his bleary eyed head from the pillow and stares in disbelief at the alarm clock. Had tomorrow come already, just a few moments ago it was yesterday and that seemed to be endless?

The shower water pelting down upon his throbbing head seemed to clear the cobwebs at least until the Panadol took effect. He began to think about last night’s events. “What was her name? Yes Edel, that was it, brown hair, big boobs, eyes…shit can’t remember, but then who the fuck cares. We danced and drank, went clubbing on to Avalon, yeah that was sweet, she moved like a mink. Back to her place for some shagging and man was she ever good.” He began to laugh as he remembered that he had fallen asleep during their second bout. She had to wake him and call a taxi to send him home, calling an end to the night.

Twisting the shower off Conor felt a sharp pain in the wrist of his right hand, “Damn,” then he remembered why. Some guy had bugged him in O’Brien’s before he met Sarah and he decked him out cold, one shot, the good old right still worked a charm. Been a while since he’d done that, “and do you know what?” he thought, “it felt good.”

Conor grabbed a towel and began to dab himself dry all the while smiling and laughing to himself thinking “shit that was a good night.”

He stepped in front of the mirror and there gazing back at him was a red-eyed wreck. He grabbed his face with his two hands and squeezed, spread his fingers a little and peered out between them. “I’ve to stop this craic, it’s turning me into an old man.”

After brushing his teeth, the hair was fixed, the body clothed and with his gym bag over his arm he was ready to leave.

Since he lived smack in the middle of the city he walked to Bewley’s rather than driving, the traffic could take forever. His brother Jack was meeting him there for lunch, he had to be there in ten minutes, so the pace was brisk.

He passed an old drunk lying in a door way, Conor stopped, backed up a little and handed the man five pounds. The man’s face showed amazement and Conor said “Go on, get some food in ya, ye’ve a lot of drinking to do later,” the man smiled and Conor was on his way.

“Bunch a bana-aa-nas-sss pound” shouted the old knacker at the fruit and veg stand on the side of Dame Street. Conor hated her, she hassled him every day to buy and he always replied “forgot my wallet.” Recently she’d taken to replying to this with “Ya miserable Nordy.” To which he would reply “And fuck you too.” They’d developed a real hate relationship over the last six months since Conor had moved into the apartment. Some day he planned to buy something from her and shock the Dub’ shit out of her.

Hitting the bottom of Grafton St. Conor found the milieu of endless walking people a tad irritating. “Why the fuck do they all have to be walking in the other direction?” This was Conor’s thought and he was right, no matter which way you wanted to go on this, Dublin’s premier street, everybody else appeared to be going in the complete opposite direction just to impede your travels.

He shouldered his way up to Bewley’s, inside he found Jack already starting on a pot of tea. “I’ll have some-a-that,” and poured himself a cup, adding just a drop of milk, so sparingly in fact you’d hardly even notice he had poured any at all, then he took Jack’s water glass and poured some of it into his tea too. Now the cup was perfect, and age old tradition passed on to him from his mother, and destined to be passed on to his children, if such a day would ever come where he would actually have a cup of tea with offspring of his own.
“Fancy some grub?” asked Jack.

“Nah, my insides are wrecked, just tea for now.”
“Well I’m gonna go up and get some, back in a minute.”
“Grand job.”

As Jack left to go through the self-service line, Conor looked around the restaurant. Bewley’s always gathered the most pretentious crowd in the city. Young South Siders with no dining-out etiquette, only the knowledge that people of their stock ate at such places as this. As Garry was chastising all the people in the restaurant in his mind, he saw a waitress walking towards him with a tray full of dishes. He tried to catch her eye, but she just looked ahead trying not to drop her load.

“Damn, I missed that one,” thought Conor as she walked past him and on through the kitchen doors.

Robert sat down to regain his place at the table and Conor felt obliged to fill him in on what he had just missed. “Jaysus man you missed that, wild fine doll just went into the kitchen, she’ll be out in a minute, serious set on her.”

“Jesus Christ man, you’ve tits on the brain. So, you have a good night last night with that bird, what was her name?”
“Rachel,” Conor answered smiling.
“Yeah, Rachel, I was off with her friend Michelle, shagged her rotten baby, how’d you do?”
“Same as yourself and I was good, yeah, yeah baby, made her really horny.”
This imitation of Austin Powers was a regular part of Conor and his friend’s daily dialogue. In a way he idolized the sexy, super spy, shagadellic.
After lunch Conor and Jack stood among the bustle of Grafton St. talking.
“You be home after work Conor?”
“Nah, meself and Shane are hitting the Old Dub. Yah coming for a pint?”
“Nah, don’t fink so, I’ve a ton o’ shit to do for work.”
“Well I’ll drink one for ya then man.”
“You do that, I’ll catch ya later.”

Conor headed towards the Liffey and on to the bottom of Marlborough St., to the gym, the daily cure for his hangovers. Only for all the drink he’d be in great shape, but as it was, the gym and the drink balanced each other out. It maintained him at a healthy and very strong level without loosing the drinker’s physique, and that didn’t come cheap.

The routine usually consisted of 40 minutes serious lifting and a couple of hundred sit-ups. Then it was 30 minutes on the bike, which he didn’t really enjoy, but it gave him a chance to eye up all the women in the place. The good old bike had got him laid several times already since he’d joined the gym. Nothing seemed to be biting today and he let his mind wander, rather than his eyes.

He began to mull over his current situation: “ Twenty three years old, single, thank fuck, head chef, good restaurant, good wages, great social life, nice car, grand apartment, perfect roommate, the brother and good health was always a bonus. There had to be more,” but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything else.

His eyes popped open as a buxom blond took to the treadmill in front of his bike. She was wearing lycra shorts and a sports bra; that was it. As she ran, her boobs nearly came out of her bra. She looked at Garry and smiled and he thought, “lunch has taken a bite.”

When she finished running he approached her. They talked chitchat for twenty minutes and it turned out she knew this great little place to get a bite to eat near her flat.

Before they had their food eaten, both had consumed four glasses of wine and with the blood flowing to all the right places so early in the day, they left their plates and some money and headed to her place.

This was no shy girl, Anne was her name, and she led him straight to her room. They frantically ripped of each other’s gym clothes and she pulled him into the shower of her en-suite. After washing each other down they fucked like dogs on her bed for a whole hour and then fell exhausted, to their respective sides of the bed.

Conor dozed off and Anne got up to make coffee. She looked in on the naked sleeping Conor and thought “What was it about this man that made me do this so freely?” She walked over to him, stroked his hair and kissed his forehead: This was the kind of man she could marry.

She let him sleep for about forty minutes then woke him with a warm cup of coffee. He kissed her and grabbed her into the bed beside him. They played about for a while, until he asked, “What time’s it?”
“Four fifteen”
“Ahh, shit I’ve to be to work in forty-five minutes.”
“Can I call you” she asked.
“Yeah, here’s my number, give us a call this weekend, we should go out.”

He hurriedly put on fresh clothes from his bag. Kissed her goodbye and bolted out the door, up towards the Green. He had to pass over O’Connell Bridge and as he did he stopped in the middle of it, went over to the edge and stared down into the river. All that water just flowing, a couple of hours ago it had been in Kildare or somewhere and now it was flowing out the bay to be diluted with the Irish Sea, “Wonder if the river minds loosing its identity in such a big sea?” He mused on this for a moment, thinking about how his life was just like the river’s: he had come from a small town and now he just seemed to dissolve into the all the other unknown faces that plodded around the city. There was just not much that set him or anyone else apart. He had no real identity, that worried him, his life had to be more than just this. How he had imagined his life would be when he came up here first. He’d stop drinking, womanizing, settle down a bit, put a hundred and ten percent in to his work and start carving out his place in the world, but none of this he had achieved yet; still just river water flowing into the big sea. Then he realized what time it was and said out loud “Fuck, got to be going.”

He arrived in good time for work. He moved into his little kitchen and relieved Shane. “I’ll see you later man in the Auld Dub about eleven, alright.”
“Yeah, I’ll already be tanked up, so ya better catch up quick!”
“I’ll start on that before I close here.”

The restaurant had 50 or so booked in and another 40 walk ins. The meals all went fine and Conor loved flirting with all the girls at work. The Maitre de was a 29-year-old red head, real slim and sexy. Conor shagged her and she still had a thing for him, but he had conquered that land and moved on. He’d love to get a bit of action from Sinead, a college student attending UCD, the snotty University on the south side of the city. He’d tried her a few times, but she was too wise to his reputation and remained unconquered.

He always kept a change of clothes at work and showered there too, he downed a few Bailey’s as he prepared to go out for the third time that week, and it was only Wednesday night. His life had turned into one big night out, really hard to tell where one night ended and the other began. All the faces he met, drinks he took, heads he punched, lips he kissed all appeared one homogenous blur in his mind.

He caught up with Shane in the Auld Dub. It was one of those newly built pubs in the Temple Bar area for Dublin’s new young and rising class. Not really Yuppies like the Eighties produced, but a different breed, more assured, less flashy and heavier drinking. A traditional band played some Christy Moore in the far corner, that made talking a chore and more often than not when someone went close to your ear to tell you something all you got were some muffled sounds and a earful of saliva. The air was saturated with smoke, some people didn’t mind it and others like Conor abhorred it. After only one drink he decided they should move on to another place to so they could get a bit of action, and give his ears some reprieve from the noise of the band.
They ended up in Peg Woffington’s the over priced, over rated ass-hole of a nightclub on Nassau Street. It was a glorified basement with a bar, overcharged admission and drinks and the people who went there, on a regular basis, over rated themselves.

Conor hit the bar like a wild man who’d been in the desert without a drink of anything for days. He turned around to hand Shane a beer but he was stuck in some bird and standing next to him, all wide eyed and horny, was no one but the waitress from Bewley’s he had seen this morning when he had lunched with his brother.

“I saw you at work earlier today, you from around here,” she started the conversation.
“Nah, from Donegal, Killybegs. Up here working, where are you from?”
“Just out the road, Dalkey, I go to Cathal Brugha, just work the odd day in Bewley’s.”

They talked for ages, flirting and giving each other the eye until last rounds were being shouted by the incessant bouncers, clanging their bottles and shouting “All right folks, this is a nightclub not a hotel, you can drink all night, but you can’t stay here.” He asked if she would like to walk and she said that would be good. They walked up Wicklow St. to the Green and ambled around it in the opposite direction as they should have been going, their talk was free and full of humor, neither were too intoxicated that it was just drunk talk, but actual conversation. Conor hadn’t actually talked to a girl in a while and found it quite refreshing rather than the usual hopping into the sack straight of the bat.

As they passed Planet Hollywood, toward the top of Grafton Street, Conor asked her if she’d like to come back to his place for one. She said no, but he could walk her back to her bus stop for the No. 8 and come into Bewley’s for lunch and then maybe they could see about breakfast another morning. Garry was caught a little off guard by her refusal but with her last prompting remark Conor thought it worth his while to walk her safely to the bus stop and be the gentleman. She kissed him quickly, but soft and gently, before she boarded the bus.

“Goodnight Conor O’Hara, see you for lunch.”
“Goodnight….” He couldn’t recall her name! He tried again “ Goodnight Ms. Bewley’s, I’ll see you there, eleven thirty in the morning,” he recovered with a smile, a wink and a nod.

On the way back up Grafton Street he ran into Shane with his bird. She had a girlfriend with her and yes it would be no bother for Conor to walk her home and take good care of her, real good care of her.

Bulmers cans sprawled across the coffee table, an ashtray next to them over flowed its bowels of butts and gray ash. The smell of both hung heavily in the air, the sharp nicotine odor cut thorough the air and the fermented apple smell of the Bulmers lingered everywhere. The opening of a window let in some welcome air and expelled some of the stench, from too many other mornings like this the smells had worked their way into the carpet and furniture.

The open window let in some extra light too. Clothes and shoes lay scattered all around across the floor and a comatose body occupied the sofa, wearing only its boxer shorts. Empty take-away food containers adorned the counter in the kitchen and next to them were many unwashed plates, glasses and sets of silverware. The sink itself was full of gray grimy cold water, filled the day before with good intentions, but now adding to the overall feel of filth.

Slowly the room began to take shape again, the water was replaced with hot fresh soapy water; dishes began to appear in the drying rack clean. The empty cans and ashtray were disposed off into a plastic sack. The television was switched on bringing life to the room and causing the body on the sofa to stir, reaching down for the rest of its clothes, dressed without saying a word and lethargically let itself out of the apartment.

Some Fibreeze was sprayed to combat the habitual stench of stale beer and cigarettes. A stack of men’s magazines has been toppled and it was righted and those that had got wet from splashing beer were throwing out with the cans. The corner of a poster curled up on itself, trying to force the rest of it to fall off the wall; it was re-tacked and looked decent even though the poster’s subject could never be called so.

Music came in through the sitting-room door from one of the two bedrooms in the apartment, some Indie kinda Grunge that was popular in the early nineties and was now making a come back in the new millennium. A male figure with a bath towel around its waist stood in the doorway looking at the person who had started the clean up. They met eyes and grinned and then began to laugh uncontrollably. They were more than friends, they were brothers and they were laughing at the thought of their mother worrying about them moving to the city together and not having her to clean up after them. They knew she’d kill them if she seen the state of the room and she was due in an hour for her monthly visit. They had to get their asses in gear and get the place and themselves cleaned up before she arrived and dragged them kicking and screaming back to their hometown because they were unfit to look after themselves.

Conor and Jack managed to get the place clean in time for their mother’s arrival. Before Conor had time to announce to her that he had to meet someone for an early lunch, she told them she was dying for a cup of decent tea and was famished from her drive up to Dublin and that they would go to Bewley’s for a nice lunch and a cuppa.

Well, this worked fine for Conor as he had told Ms. Beweley last night he would be in around eleven thirty. Now a big issue here for Conor was that he is the apple of his mother’s eye and even though he has three brothers and they all know Conor is the favorite and this has lead to some advantages and disadvantages. One of the greatest disadvantages is that no girl will ever be good enough for Conor in the eye’s of his Mother Rose. Probably why he just sleeps around and never settles with one girl: none will ever be good enough for his mother and therefore none will be good enough of him.

Something about the girl he had met last night told him she was different and maybe it was serendipity that his mother wanted to go to Bewley’s for lunch.

As they walked down the street to Rose began her monthly inquisition of the two boys:

“Have you been going to Mass?”
“Yes, Mum,” replied Jack lying through his teeth. Conor decided to take a more honest approach.
“I work a lot of Sundays and I just don’t get time, I try to go Saturday evenings but I usually work then too. But I’ve been on my hands and knees praying most nights.” Conor said this a little too sarcastically and his mother picked up on it.

“Conor you’ll burn in hell with all those other sinners. When I get back to Killybegs I’ll ask Father Sharkey to say a Rosary for you and I’ll have a candle burning for you that the light will lead you back to Mass.”

“Christ-sake Mum, don’t you think that’s a bit much. This is the 21st century and people do have lives and can’t spend every free moment rhyming off prayers. Like how often do you even pray?”

“Don’t you dare challenge your Mother,” she said firmly and then adding for the record. “I pray every hour on the hour and every hour I choose the soul of one of you boys to pray for and now I see my prayers for you Conor have been landing on deaf ears!”

“Mum, I’m not going to hell, I’m just living life and having a good time and from the stories I hear from Dad about you when you lived in Dublin, when you were around my age, I reckon you did quite the bit of living!”

“Well that may be so but I’m praying for forgiveness now so I won’t burn in the fires of hell like all the heathen in this city.”

“Fair enough Mum, I’ll pray for redemption when I’m your age for now I am going to do a bit of living.”
“Will the pair of you give it a rest. You’re like two politicians arguing over some-fin that is not worth the air ya breath” Jack interjected. “Call it a truce, at least till we get through lunch?”

The two antagonists looked at each other and silently agreed to Robert’s wise counsel. The rest of the walk was filled with questions about their jobs, shopping for groceries, what they do with their spare time and had any of them met any nice Catholic girls?

“Funny you should ask that Mum, you’re about to meet a girl I met last night. She works at Bewley’s and I told her I’d been in this morning”

“Arrah Garry, I can’t be meeting some girl you met out in a nasty night club. She’s probably a tramp, meets guys every night she goes out and you are just the flavor of the day.”

“Well, I’ll say nothing, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” Garry left it at that.

The trio made their way with Conor leading, to the section he had seen the girl in the day before. Mary’s head was stretched out, bobbing over and back like a bantam hen, eyeing the room for a hussy that fitted the description in her mind of the harlot her son was going to have her meet.

They seated themselves and a girl that was not her served them. By the time the meal was half way over there had been no sight of elusive one. Conor was thoroughly disappointed and Mary was thoroughly pleased.

Jack was getting a little impatient and made up the excuse that he had to be getting to work, even though he had scheduled to have the whole day off to spend it with his mother. Really he had to meet some of the lads for early drinks. His favorite soccer team, Hib’s, was playing their arch rivals, Rangers, in a big game this evening. It was tradition to go on the beer early to be in the right state of mind to do a wild bit of cheering down the pub.

“Mum, I’ll see you again next month, tell Dad I’ll call him tomorrow about how the big game goes tonight.”
“I hope Jack you are not going out to the pub to watch that game?”
“Naw, I’ve to work late and I’ll get one of the lads to record it for me” he said this with a wink in his eye to Conor that his mother didn’t see.
“You’re a good boy Jack, I only hope you are a good influence on your brother. See if you can’t get him to go to Mass with you this Sunday.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but hey, you just don’t know with these pagans! I’ll see you at home later Conor,” and as he reached over to shake his bother’s hand he sent the milk jug flying over the table spilling into Mary’s lap.

“Arrah, Jack. Look what you’ve done ya big egit.”
“Sorry Mum, I’ve to rush. Bye.”
“Conor where’s the toilets till I get myself cleaned off.” Conor pointed and off she went muttering something to herself, Conor reckoned it was probably some payer specially for the removal of milk from a pair of pants! That be a real fancy miracle, put Lever Brother’s right out of business.

Conor sat alone at the table, looking around to see if he could see the girl. She had said she would be here and with this thought Conor caught himself thinking ‘what the hell do I care’ and tried to put her face out of his system. Tried to tell himself that she was just another in a long litany of girls he’d take to before he settled down a million years from now.

Rose seemed to be gone an awful long time, it must have been a real long prayer she was reciting he figured and began to laugh like a mad man sitting all alone. Just then a hand plopped on his shoulder.

“Hi ya, there handsome,” it was her, Conor was speechless, he still couldn’t remember her name, then seeing the name tag on her uniform, he recovered.

“Hey, how are you Sarah, we’ve been in here a while, you get home safely last night?”
“Yeah, I got home safe all right, Da was up waiting me, he’s a big dote, always waiting to see if his little girl gets in home, oh yeah, sorry I’m late, I was put upstairs on a different station and couldn’t get down ‘till now. So how’s things with you today?”
“Fine, my Mum is in town, she’s here, just went to the bathroom. You want to meet her?”
“Ach, I don’t know, maybe we can meet up later?”
Conor was disappointed at this refusal, he’d never asked a girl to meet his mother before and this rebuke was a bit much. “That be fine,” she saw the hurt in his eyes.
Before she had a chance to respond Rose came back from the bathroom like a miniature whirlwind all flustered.

“Conor, can you believe the people here, I was in the bathroom, with my pants up to the hand-drier doing nothing unusual and in comes this pup of a girl telling me to stop being obscene, that old women like me should be in a home and not making a spectacle of themselves in public. Like can you believe the cheek.”
“Mum, calm her down there, yeah that’s wild terrible, but I’d like you to meet my friend Sarah.”

Rose turned to inspect the hussy that was leading her little Conor astray, she eyed her up, making a mental note that she was too skinny, her boobs were to large, her hair too long and not tied back like a good catholic girl’s should be, and her blouse was too tight fitting! After this observation, she slowly and coolly extended her hand to Sarah and said, “Pleased to meet you, Conor says you’re nice” and that was all she said, her face didn’t even break a smile.

Sarah extended her hand too and repeated “please to meet you” returning the cold stare.
Oh hell, thought Conor, a bloody stand-down on their first meeting, this is not a good start. To break the tension Conor interjected some lighthearted conversation.

“Mum, Sarah lives out in Dalkey and goes to Cathal Brugha, studying Hotel Management. Didn’t you work in hotels in Dublin when you were her age.” Garry was too late to prevent the error of comparing Sarah to his mother.

“Yes, I did, but that was when Dublin was not the dirty, fast city it is today.”
Sarah stood up for her city “It’s not that bad, I’ve lived her all my life and I don’t think it’s that fast or dirty.” Sarah finished this off with a blank expression as if to say retort to that.

“Well, I just read in the Times, about all the bad things happening in the city everyday and I don’t remember there being too many murders or robberies when I was living here. Young people these days have lost all morals, they’ve gone to hell.”

Conor couldn’t help himself, he had to join in on Sarah’s defense “Mum. I’m young, does that mean I’m immoral, am I going to hell?”
“Well Conor if you keep that tone of voice with me and keep not going to Mass, then I’d pretty much say you’re going to hell!”
“Rose, I don’t think I am going to hell, I go to Mass every Sunday!”

People had actually begun to stop in the restaurant and listen to their conversation, when Rose noticed this she turned to the gawkers and shouted “Get a life, you too are going to hell!”

This was too much for Conor, he had to get his Mum and Sarah outside and calmed down. “How’s about we three go for a nice walk in the Green?”

Both just looked at Conor and headed for the door out onto Grafton Street. Garry was thinking to himself that whatever chance he had with Sarah was gone now thanks to his mother’s insolence. Out on the street Conor took a good look at Sarah, her hair was down now, last night it had been pinned up. Her skin was tanned, not really dark, but an outside tan, not like most Irish girls with their milk-white skin. Her eyes were looking a deep marble brown. He didn’t really notice them last night, but now they were magnificent.

Sarah and his mother walked side by side, a little ahead of Conor. Neither were talking, Sarah was just staring ahead, Rose was looking at the ground and glancing to Sarah every once in a while. As they entered the Green the three came parallel to each other with Conor in the middle. Conor was thinking about his walk around the perimeter of the Green last night with Sarah. With only the two of them it had been a pleasure, now it was agony. They made it the whole way around without making any real conversation. Mary was being ignorant and Conor knew that when he got home with her later he would be having quite the argument.

Sarah didn’t say much either, she smiled every so often at Conor and this gave him hope that something may be salvaged yet of this day. Mary stopped abruptly, pivoted on one foot and look at the two younger ones and announced;
“I’m going to Brown and Thomas to do some shopping, Conor I’ll see you back at the apartment later, we’ll have dinner after that, your lady friend can come along if she likes.”
“Thanks mum, how’d you like that Sarah?”
“I don’t know, we’ll see, I might be doing something with my family.”
Mary couldn’t resist “Are we not good enough for you?”
Sarah went to open her mouth but Conor went first “Mum, just go on, we’ll give you a call,” and Conor being the apple of his mother’s eye he had to ask before he could let her go and have a clean conscience “you all right Mum?”
Mary said nothing in reply just winced her face, tried a little smile and walked away.
“Sarah, I do apologize f or my mother’s behavior, I don’t know what got into her, she’s usually not too bad, apart from being a freak Catholic.”
“No, need to apologize to me, it’s plain to see.”
“What’s plane to see?”
“That you’re her boy.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
“You don’t get it do you? She loves you so much Conor, that no girl is good enough to take her place, not that I am saying I want to be with you forever, but she is not ready for any girl to come on her territory.”
“Well, that’s probably why I haven’t ever introduced her to any of my girlfriends since I was fourteen.”
“Are you calling me your girlfriend?”
“Na, I was just making a reference” Conor flashed her a big grin as he said this and added, “How much longer have you off today?”
“The whole day, why?”
“Well I think we should go for a drink.”
“It’s only one in the afternoon Conor, are you serious?”
“Hell yeah, sure it’d be good fun, come on.”
“All right, I’ll go.”

The pair went back down Grafton Street to O’Neill’s pub, a trendy pub, very popular among the twenty somethings. When you went in first it looked like a small affair but as you walked further in you found that it snaked around, revealing nooks and crannies everywhere. They found one such nook to nest into and Conor went up to get himself a Bulmers and a Budwieser for Sarah. While the barman was getting the drinks Garry let his mind wander off:

‘Right, what am I doing now, I’ve pissed off the mother, I’m here in the pub with Sarah and where do I go from that, I don’t want to have dinner with the mother, don’t think Sarah wants that anyway, and how do I go from one in the afternoon to bed with Sarah when the mother is lurking around, maybe when I call the mother to tell her I’ll be back for dinner she’ll go off home early to Donegal, a shit, why am I even worried, I’ll just have a few drinks and it’ll all work itself out.’
“Hey, sir, hey” a voice was calling Conor.
“What?”
“Your drinks, that’ll be four pounds eighty.”
“Cheers mate.”
Sitting back down beside Sarah he took a big gulp of his Bulmers and felt the sweet nectar flow throughout his body loosening all the joints, making him feel at ease, letting his tongue loosen up a little too. Ah, this was more like it.

“Conor, your mother is quite a character, don’t be worried about her offending me, I am a big girl, I can look after myself. She’s nothing compared to my ex’s mother, Jeannie. She was a real Blackrock bitch, you know the snotty South Side kind. Jesus, she gave me a time every chance she got.”

“Glad to hear it. Sarah, this has been a weird beginning to an afternoon. Let us start all over again. How are ya?”
“I’m fine Conor, how are you?” She replied laughing.
“I’m great now, you know what?”
“What?”
“Your wild good looking,” Conor wasn’t much on compliments, but he felt compelled to say something to her.
“Thanks, you don’t look so bad yourself!”
“I mean it, since I saw you yesterday and then again last night I’ve been thinking about you. I’m not the sort of fella that likes to settle down or anything, but for some reason I get this strange feeling from you.”
“Strange, what do you mean strange?”
“Like, I like you or something.”
“Well, that’s encouraging for a girl, you like me or something, I hope something is as good as liking!” The two began to laugh at their silliness and waved at the nearest waitress for another round.

They stayed drinking in O’Neill’s until about five and by then they had quite a few beverages put away in them.

“Sarah, I’ve to call Mum, tell her we’ll see ourselves for dinner and for her to go ahead with Jack.”
“Conor, I can get us free dinner at the Hilton if you like?”
“Of course I like, how do you do that?”
“I work there on and off at large banquets, along with the job at Bewley’s, I know enough people there to get good service. After you call your Mum, call a taxi to bring us over there.”
“No, bother” replied Garry.

During a superb dinner they had two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon between them and for desert they had a few Bailey’s and ice. Conor was staring into Sarah’s eyes, and she was just looking at him with a smiling face.
“What are you looking at Mr. O’Hara?”
“Oh, it’s Mr. O’Hara now is it?”
“Yes.”
“I was just looking at you and wondering how the hell I met you and have come to be across from you in the Hotel Hilton, half drunk, well fed and most of all, I haven’t kissed you yet!”
“Does that annoy you that we haven’t kissed yet?”
“Not annoy, makes it more challenging.”
“Why, have I been a challenge?”
“Compared to most of the tarts I meet here in Dublin, yes you have been a challenge, for heaven sake, I’ve seen you in the day time, I don’t know when I last saw a girl that I met the night before during the day!”
“Conor I want to kiss you!” This threw Conor for a loop.
“Excuse me?”
“I said I want to kiss you.”
“Well I don’t think the Clarabell Restaurant in the Hilton is the best place of that. Can it wait?”
“I can get us a room here, it can wait until then.” Her smile was beaming and Garry couldn’t control the smile on his face either, he didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or pure happiness. But this was a good day in the life of Conor C. O’Hara.

They rode the elevator to the sixth floor and went down two corridors, Sarah stopped at room 628 and punched in the code. She was acting very cool, but Garry was holding his breath getting very nervous, which was not his usual self. He didn’t feel in control of the situation, somehow he felt like he was being seduced, but now was not the time to be getting philosophical, he was in a posh hotel room with a beautiful woman and she wanted him, he didn’t care who was in control if the end results were the same.

Sarah had brought a bottle of Cabernet up with her, got it from whatever connection she had to get the dinner and room. She opened the bottle with a screw she pulled from her pocket and poured a glass each.
“To us.”
“To us” replied Conor.
After taking a sip, she put a hand to Conor’s chest and pushed him backward onto the bed. Conor landed in a sitting position and took a gulp of his wine. Sarah began to sway to and fro, as if to some music in her head, putting her wineglass to her mouth and taking small sensuous sips. Then she put the glass down on a dresser and began to undo the buttons on her shirt. Conor just looked on in amazement. She looked up slyly as she undid the last button and as she stared him straight in the face she let the shirt fall off her shoulders and onto the floor.

Conor had to take a deep breath to prevent himself from hyperventilating. He wanted to reach out and pull her close to him, but her little show was not finished and he was being really aroused. As she undid her pants she walked slowly over to him and standing just inches from his face, she let her pants fall off her hips.

She now stood in only her bra and panties of white lace, she bent down to Conor and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, then pulled back and looked at him. He was speechless, it was the greatest kiss he had ever tasted, the feel still lingered on his lips. He wanted more and put his hand out to her, she came in closer and straddled him, bringing her mouth to his once again.

They began to make love and for all the countless times Conor had performed this act in the past few years with nameless girls this felt like the first time, he felt like a virgin in her presence. Their lovemaking lasted for hours, sometimes taking a twenty-minute rest and commencing again. When they got hungry late in the night they ordered room service, ate a little and then went back to lovemaking.

Around four in the morning they lay spooned up in bed, Sarah was perfectly curved into his body, her skin felt so soft under his touch. They were talking about nothing in particular, conversation didn’t matter much now, all they wanted to hear was the sound of each other’s voices no matter what the words were.

As their eyes got heavier and to talk took an effort Conor leaned his head a little closer to Sarah’s ear and whispered “I love you.”
Sarah didn’t respond, she was asleep, and as Conor found himself falling asleep too, he thought to himself ‘at least I can tell her again in the morning.’

When Conor woke he didn’t recognize his surroundings and felt a little disorientated. Then the place came back to him The Hilton. He propped himself up in bed and stretched his jaw. Turning to his left he saw the empty half of a bed where Sarah had been the night before, on the bedside table there was a letter:

Conor,
Sorry to leave you to wake alone, but I thought this would be the easiest way. Last night was the most amazing night I have ever had with a man and Conor you are an amazing man. Before I fell asleep I heard what you said and although you didn’t hear me, I said it back to you “I love you.” I had to leave before you got up or else I don’t know if I would have been able to leave at all. I have not been perfectly straight with you Conor, I'm engaged to be married. I graduate from Cathal Brugha in about five weeks and then my fiancee and I are moving to Dusseldorf in Germany. He is going to manage one of the Hilton Hotels there, he is currently in London at Hyde Park. That is how I got the room here, I’ve good connections. I don’t know when I will be back in Ireland. I just want you to know Conor that I love you and will not ever forget you. Somehow I know our lines will cross again sometime in the future, I wish it could have been different. You’ll love some lucky girl one-day and I’ll be forever jealous of that.
Love you,
Sarah Daly

‘Shit’ thought Conor, wasn’t thinking that!
As he walked back along the Green from the Hilton, he looked over into it and smiled, smiled big and wide and said out loud “Some girl.”