THROUGH THE ELMS AND THE SYCAMORES Ray Rosenstock
1
There was this girl I knew when I was twenty-two and she could’ve been a film star I swear in all fairness if only by the look in her eyes. That was a good while back when I first met her and all but it never seems that long when the memory is still raw. Like your first time at the pictures or mounting a bike or that half-kiss of a lip at the Primary and whatever was apace when you lost your virginity which you’d never have seen in the cinema. She had this contagious laugh with a great set of teeth to trigger it off. Sometimes you’d wonder what had been so funny in the first place but we’d all get caught up in the craic and all that till she’d burst out again and infect us with her eyes all alive like a storm. Especially in the pub. That really brought out her gift for the gab and those sweetest of songs she sang like Doris Day. If ever a blowin made such an impact - don’t be talking! Talk of the town she was for the short time of her stay. Always in a good way that is. They always spoke of her in a good way even after she left for Dublin before she ever got the key to the door. She wasn’t what you’d call a right stunner being a country girl herself and sort of hiding her looks behind those green blue eyes and all till she went to Dublin. And after she left for Dublin she turned into the right beauty I knew she’d become just the same as Doris Day in Calamity Jane. Different gravy as we’d say down our way with her hair-style and lipstick and shiny high heels and black stockings. They really brought out the shape of her legs like a mistake of nature later put right. And when I saw her that night in her knee-length skirt and shiny high heels and black stockings - don’t be talking! Anyway that was after she went off to Dublin and came down our way again the odd weekend with her new looks and all the rest of it to visit us like the green leaves of summer and the sky in them to match her eyes.Three times she arrived of a Friday evening but I only got to see her the once before she was gone again. I mean you’d swear ’twas a town of thousands or whatever. There were fifteen pubs all the same not including the hotel and you could be down the other side of the village looking for the green VW which she might have come out in or mightn’t. Sure wasn’t she always the walking type when I knew her before she got her green car and all in Dublin. Either way you could be in a pub waiting there over a pint and casually asking someone if herself had been round after hearing the word earlier that a green VW was in town. So I’d just have the one there and move on in my quest like John Wayne in The Searchers. I was starting to think that if it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all I swear for I must’ve been half way through the sixteen pubs before spotting the maverick. ’Twas her laugh gave her away coming from the packed snug in the hotel of all places where you’d hardly miss out of on a Friday night by right. But there she was like the queen of all bees presiding over the boyos a year later with her knee-length skirt and black stockings and shiny high heels and what have you and her green blue eyes in a perfect storm and the hair all changed like Cleopatra. Indeed ’twas her greeny blues that first caught my eye when I snuck past the snug like a baddie on a WANTED poster that you’d still see in the silver-screen westerns. Straight to cover and the crowd at the bar where the Jameson mirror above the till gave you a decent enough view of the OK Corral as we called it behind me. I could
2
see the TV’s reflection too showing the end credits of The Virginian which turned me half-cross-eyed for a minute trying to read the mirrored writing and all. You couldn’t hear the theme music either what with all that carry-on going on in the horsebox and herself in full throttle serving it up to her cronies like Calamity Jane. But I knew the score as good as gold and tapped time with the tune as it played out in my head. And when the farmer alongside me stood up to chat with two other out-of-towners didn’t I slide over to his bar stool in a flash and move his glass down the counter and all to get a better view of herself like Alice through the looking glass. A transformed nightingale to be sure - she took away my breath. But I couldn’t let her see me now with all that drink in me it took to find her so I stayed at the bar eyeing the mirror with only the odd risk of a lookaround when I’d light up sort of pretending not to be looking in so she wouldn’t see me whatever about the darts lads either. But then she did her Debbie Reynolds from How the West Was Won and that was me done for the night right enough when her green blue eyes collided with mine for just a blink of an eye in the mirror. And I’ll build you a home in the meadow…Gone eleven. You wouldn’t credit where the night went. At least they were still throwing darts down the road in O’Donovan’s so I chanced one last look at her as though she’d never be back before downing my chaser like a gunslinger and slunk out the side way to the strain of Once I Had a Secret Love from the horsebox. Nearly turned round once too but nobody had said anything behind the bar about her asking after me so I didn’t bother and wouldn’t you know before mid-day the next morning wasn’t she on her way back to Dublin! ’Twas a bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon that night right enough the way he was feeling sorry for himself like a man left for dead all alone on the empty street without knowing whether Grace Kelly had left him for good and all. Still ’tis a great thing about the old darts all the same that you could be on your ear from the beer and still throw a double-starter in the blink of a bull’s eye. No bother. Sure my best buddy could do it halfcocked in his sleep that deadly with the old arrows he was The Snipe who himself was still stuck in the snug with herself and half the rest of the darts squad that night when I actually won a few bob for a change down in O’D’s. That was the second time she’d come down from Dublin. The first time didn’t I miss her completely only finding out on Saturday night that she was around since Friday and there was Davy Crockett still stuck in O’Donovan’s playing darts for two guineas and the independence of Texas! Actually ’twas the hotel the night before that bushwhacked me to be honest what with the new twenty-six inch TV all set up in the snug for the latest experimental colour transmissions and the last thing youd’ve thought of is that she might’ve dropped in. There’d be a gang of us horseboxed by nine of a Friday with the old hatch service to the bar and all to keep us corralled there all evening don’t you know where we’d watch the main news in black and white before The Virginian came on in full colour at quarter past. Sometimes ’twould revert to the old black and white of a sudden and we’d do a stampede in the Corral like we did as kids in the cinema when the film broke down entirely for a good five minutes as it did half the night for The Alamo. Lawless? Stop the lights! ’Twas more like Tombstone kicking sawdust from the floor and booing and baying like a lynch mob from the sixpenny benches up front that’d harden the arse off any rough rider. The projectionist was paralytic I swear till yer-man and his torch was upon us like a bounty-hunter picking off the outlaws with 3
his sawn- off shotgun full flash in the face don’t you know one saddle-tramp after the other before the lights came on. Then we’d all calm down again till the next riot. And when law and order was restored in the final hour wasn’t that loaded flashlight waiting off-limits in ambush for any of us with the guts of Geronimo double-dared by The Snipe and all who might undertake such a hazardous snake-crawl from our wooden reservation up front to the prized El Dorado of the half-dollar seats at the back. Sure we knew ‘twas an experimental colour transmission and all but you had to do it if only for old time’s sake and the bit of craic. Anyway there was no stampede in the old corral that night as the black and white only interfered with a flicker the very odd time which was fair enough. But it just wasn’t The Virginian without the Virginian himself in it and that cheesed me off altogether almost as much as the job in the creamery which we called the crematorium for laughs. I mean not even a mention from start to finish that he’d gone to Cheyenne or Laramie on Shiloh business or what have you or even ramrodding a drive from Medicine Bow to Montana. No explanation at all whatsoever. Merciful Hour! Not even in them smoke signals? grinned the manager dead serious like and his half-scalped head stuck in the old hatch like he was reading the news with a trayful of pints and chasers following through. Jaysus! belched The Snipe with a swear that there was nothing they didn’t hear around there at all. I raised a glass to that remark even if I could’ve said it myself. But we watched the mushy episode as it was all about Trampas falling for an Apache squaw -can you credit it- who catches the baddie’s bullet in the end of course leaving himself free to resume normal cow-poking at Shiloh for the next adventure. If only I’d known the storyline beforehand it might’ve been different. As it was ’twas quarter to eleven when Trampas rode home to Shiloh with just enough time for a small one before making tracks for the last game of darts in O’Donovan’s. That’s when we arranged for the massive tournament for Saturday. Seven of us. Best of seven. Seven bob a man. Showdown at seven. Night of the Magnificent Seven we called it. A fierce battle it was too and went way past the 90 minutes it took for The Alamo to fall to Santa Anna’s final attack. And sure wasn’t it after last orders before Davy Crockett here got lanced by The Snipe in a Mexican stand-off when you could hear this ugh of a thump from my last dart as it dug into the wrong side of the wire. There was no second prize but I got a pint on the house for my old gallantry and a chaser from the winner which was well after closing time too mind. ’Twas no disgrace either to be pipped at the post by The Snipe. We all knew his older brother was the best thrower of a hammer in the province and some said he could’ve even played darts for Ireland if he hadn’t had to take the old mail boat to Liverpool in the eye of the storm in ’66.Anyway there was no way I was ever going to run into herself that night for sure. On her last visit six months later I was ahead of the posse. Wasn’t it the boss of all people - The Quiet Man we called him who relayed the news in the office that he’d seen a green VW with Dublin registration plates and all parked outside the bank when he was coming back to the creamery from his usual fancy lunch in Fitz’s which must have played chopsticks with his dentures I’m telling you ’cos ’twas nearly afternoon tea time before the message came through at last like ticker tape. Bullseye! says I to myself like an injun with his ear to the rail track and told him he was as sharp as Wyatt Earp for the gas of it. On top of that didn’t O’Donovan’s have a new pay-phone in so you knew it wouldn’t give you trouble in your hour of need. 4
Anyway it was my favourite local and not just because of the darts mind. But the old blood was up like Custer’s that Friday I swear. So I set up my headquarters there at the planned time of half-seven and after a pint and chaser to steady the ship and bring me up to the time she’d be out didn’t I scribble off a list of numbers and wonder how many pubs would have to be rung before they told me she was on the premises as she could’ve been in any old pub this time if not out at fancy Fitz’s for a meal with the parents or what have you all uppity like. The year before it was different. She’d been in the village a fortnight before I first met her in The Munster & Leinster. The nineteen-year-old only daughter of our new bank manager telling me all about deposit accounts like the fine teller she was and whatever use a mattress might have had in this day and age certainly had very little to do with saving money. Ah stop the lights says I which was still said down our way and didn’t she raise an eyebrow at my old quiff I swear that was smothered in Brylcream like I was a mad Comanche or something half-hypnotised and all by her blue green eyes. You wouldn’t mind but it was only half-ten and me with the mother and father of a hangover after the darts in O’Donovan’s and all the night before. Sure I only went in anyway to change a few bags of change for the boss as an excuse to get out of the old crematorium a while what with me dying for a pub to open and crying out for the cure don’t you know in the eye of the storm. But the mattress got me going right enough and when I agreed with her about the better use it could be put to didn’t she let go with that lovely laugh of hers and I looked at her milky teeth like Doris Day and then into her eyes half-hypnotised and all and as sure as there’s an eye in a duck they took away my breath I swear. Anyway there was no queue at the bank so I just happened to mention that Once Upon A Time in The West was on in The Astor all weekend and I was thinking of going on Friday if she was interested. Bullseye? Stop the lights! She didn’t go out on weeknights what with her job in the bank and her father the new manager and she being a blow-in and all. Not that there was much
5
going on anyway apart from the cinema of course unless you enjoyed a pint like myself after work and the odd game of darts and bit of craic in the hotel or O’Donovan’s. So I took her out to the pictures for the next few Fridays never minding The Virginian when we’d meet in the hotel beforehand and talk about the week that was in it over a few pints and a glass of red wine for herself and she thought it was gas calling the creamery the crematorium. After the pictures it was great walking her home. We’d always call back to the hotel first being just a spit across the road from The Astor and she’d take an age over her glass of wine. But I’d still give the old nod to the bar to have another one ready for her at closing time when I’d have my couple of pints and chasers at the same time to keep up with her. The hunger would be tearing into you by the time we’d finish up and she tried to put the skids under me that first night by drawing a face with her finger on my back-up pint. I nearly went paralytic I swear and you wouldn’t mind but she was hardly guzzling down the red wine I’d bought her…in a long glass at that! Out on the street the whiff of chips was just the business coming from Johnny Morrison’s caravan only fifty paces downhill by the grotto. The Duke knew his beef to a T-bone as his day job was in Ma Keeffe’s butchers and his chipper did a fair enough trade on weekends between the pubs and the pictures from six to midnight. I’d always be sound for a last order – even up to half twelve I swear – when the old quarter-pounder the size of a half-pounder would be sizzling away patiently for my arrival. Gettysburger and bullets…loads of blood was the usual takeaway and sure if he saw The Snipe in my company coming up the hill wouldn’t The Duke have something similar up and running for him. Any other stragglers from O’Donovan’s infantry had to wait being lucky enough to be served so late in the first place 6
thanks to us. That was The Duke for you as sound as a pounder. Sure didn’t he even look like John Wayne when he put his hat on and he six foot three with the accent down to a Tbone and a great man for the Westerns too. When he first blew in of course weren’t the pubs full of talk about him being the lovechild of you-know-who what with his name being Morrison and all that stuff about The Quiet Man - the film I mean - with Maureen O’Hara up in Mayo where he was bred and buttered. To an ordinary filmgoer that would’ve made our Johnny about 15 and he 29 with four babbies including twins and another expected at the drop of his old gunbelt. Either way he got stuck with the nickname and carried it like a star till he had to head North to Alaska . Sure listen didn’t he nearly beat me to the draw one time with a daft old question about The Magnificent Seven which wasn’t the usual Brad Dexter one that found most folks out saving myself. Don’t be talking! It took me to the end of my Gettysburger till I sobered up and clicked with The Seven Samurai. ’Twas a close call that night all right. Gettysburger and bullets pilgrim he drawled with both thumbs in his buckle as we pulled up to our station. And what might pleasure the pretty young lady from the bank? Gotta be a bag a bullets with blood said she like Annie Oakley and serviettes! That gave Johnny a right old jolt but after a panic attack and some rifling and rummaging he managed to uncover a fistful of Kleenex with a Robert E. Lee apology befitting the manners of a refined Southern gentleman. Oscar material it turned out to be too did the Kleenex. After agreeing how good Henry Fonda played the baddie in the film and how The Harmonica Man – Charles Bronson from The Magnificent Seven – gunned him down in the end, we waved goodnight to The Duke scuttling downhill to the bench on the other side of the grotto as I’d just spotted that last patrol pouring out of O’Donovan’s at 7
the quickstep and by the time we got seated out of sight of the advancing party my old Gettysburger was history with only bloodstained fingers to show that I’d done for it. But there was no going back uphill for more bullets or I’d’ve had Sergeant Snipe and his merry troopers riding our dust home for sure. So I held my ground and just as well too for she was a sight to behold that night with her head tilted back like Doris Day observing the full moon and easing one slow bullet after another into her chamber the way Calamity Jane might do or Cat Ballou with no care in the world on her but the wide night sky. She loved the walk home all the same going hand in hand cleaned by the old Kleenex round the back road from the church and away from the half-lit houses and streetlamps where you’d often see the moon and the stars flickering and twinkling through the elms and the sycamores. I asked her if she’d ever seen The Alamo which she hadn’t but she knew the words to the theme music off by heart I can tell you and before you could say Davy Crockett didn’t The Green Leaves of Summer flow out of her like honey. We’d come onto the other end of Main Street and stop outside her front gate for a goodnight kiss or even two - ah you know yourself - before she’d sidestep away like Scarlett O’Hara with a bit of a giggle in her last goodnight. Then I’d light up like Henry Fonda striking sulphur on the wall and hit the trail home with a shot from my naggin. Oh my darling Clementine…After bringing her to O’Donovan’s for the Irish music one Saturday night she started becoming more independent of a sudden going out on her own and all and making more friends. The pictures on Friday faded out too as she nearly always had other plans even when The Alamo came back for a one-night stand after seven years with The Green Leaves of Summer and all which I had to see on my own again. It was that first night at the trad 8
session of course when she sprang up like Doris Day and silenced the whole pub with a few songs from Calamity Jane. Once I Had a Secret Love. You’d hardly hear the sip of a pint either while she sang Black Hills of Dakota but would’ve been waiting in vain like the man who never was for her Green Leaves of Summer. They also had the colour television as well as the hotel and for some odd reason the old reception was better there and the sandwiches too but the OKC was still the place to be if ’twas TV you were after. Then you’d always have the boyos coming over to buy her drinks and all and some of them buddies of mine too mind. The Duke knew his manners and was a perfect gent on his break from the old chipper but The Snipe would take liberties after he’d a few in and ’twas then you’d start asking yourself if his grand-uncle was really related to John McCormack on the Ma’s side with all those “endearing young charms” of Thomas Moore in his baritone brogue and all giving her the odd wink don’t you know and waiting for the old nod back till she’d join in for a chorus like they were Sonny and Cher! I’d be over in the darts side of the pub by then even if ’twas only rings I was playing with myself knowing it wouldn’t be this buckaroo walking her home that night or any other for that matter unless I could get to the bank early enough of a Monday with the right sort of picture in mind for the Friday. And somehow Henry Fonda managed to pull it off one more time even if she wouldn’t watch The Wild Bunch on Friday which I’d’ve seen again after Wednesday no bother. Lady Caroline Lamb was the last picture we saw together that Saturday but she only let me hold her hand for a bit of it and even asked me for a smoke during the film which she’d never done before when she’d have the fag in her left hand so as I couldn’t take hold of hers and then she’d only blow some rings or just funnel it out her nose. Little button nose! 9
After the cinema we went back to the hotel as we did in the past but this time she got to the bar ahead of me and ordered a pint for myself with no chaser and her own glass of wine without even asking me what I’d have. I’d barely settled into my pitiful pint when she started talking about space – and it wasn’t outer space she meant. She needed . . .space . . . imagine it gruff as you like. Feeling crowded so she was. I joked that there was all the space in the world in our village since the moon landing and that she was always in the middle of crowds anyway after I first introduced her to O’Donovan’s. She didn’t laugh at that leaving me sitting there like Sitting Bull all out of words till I ordered the same again with a chaser but nothing for her she said before finishing off her wine and standing up with a hand out of we’ll-still-be-friends and all the rest of it and sure isn’t that when it came home to me why she hadn’t taken off her coat when she came in. Then I asked her to let me walk her home for old time’s sake as Lord Byron did Lady Caroline in that film full of poetry if she pleased. So she sat for a minute humming Que Sera Sera to herself and looking around with no interest and all as I gulped down the pint and chaser and put on my jacket while biting my lower lip for the want of something to say. She broke the silence out in the street with some remark about the hotel being dreary and that O’Donovan’s was only a man’s pub except for the Saturday session before bypassing the chipper on the blind side without even calling on The Duke for the usual what with me famished and given as much consideration as any old injun ever got. It was a mild starry night with a full moon and a bit of a breeze as we took our same old route she once called romantic away from the half-lit houses and streetlamps heading for the path that was lined by the elms and the sycamores. Her hands were in her jeans pockets when not in her coat. Hardly a word passed her lips 10
except when she looked up at the sky and whispered something personal to the moon or the stars. Beneath her breath of a sudden The Green Leaves of Summer half-whistled out of tune just to turn the screw I knew. I lit up. She wouldn’t have one. Steadied the ship a stride behind her with a silent swig from the old naggin. Friends! I muttered to myself. FRIENDS? Like limping Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lambing! It burst out into the night with the hunger tearing into me. That brought the hands out of her pockets right enough and Jaysus did she give me a mouthful! If ever a man needed his naggin – don’t be talking!
And another thing says she with a tongue on her like tumbleweed just as it
seemed I’d eyed the storm but my ears were as deaf now as the hushed trees around us. I was as mad as Billy the Kid in The Left-Handed Gun. A bit of wind picked up and wakened some leaves on the sycamores. Go-on-go-on! you could hear them hiss. So I pulled her to my chest by the shoulders and went to plant one on her lips. She turned her face and I miss-kissed her jaw. Scuffled and cursed like antichrists we did dare-devilled by Billy the Kid now in the eye of the storm. Lassoed an arm around her neck - another bottle by the neck! She clouted me one on the ear. Jaysus! Left hand through her long black hair with the moon in it gripping the back of her head. Right hand stroking and groping her Levis bum. Rawhide! Bullseye! Planted one right on the smacker. Double-top. Both eyes. Brilliant billiards! Hush-hush sweet Charlotte. Don’t be crying now sweet Caroline my lamb. It’s only me… only me…hush! The music of Bonanza stampeded through my head half mixed-up with The Virginian and Clementine …my darling Clementine! Then I grappled her like a wrangler and dragged the struggling calf into the bower before bringing it down at last… safe in the shade of the elms and the sycamores. So there I was in 11
O’Donovan’s at half-seven sharp well over a year later with the phone list and all and wondering how much I’d have to slot into the box before I got lucky. The hotel was first up remembering how long it took me to find her there the last time but I also wanted to get a bit of practice in while steadying the old ship and all so decided to put the hotel on hold till the next pint like you’d do with a trump card in a game of twenty-five. ’Twas like an arrow through the heart when the barman told me she’d been in with The Snipe and a few lads right enough but wasn’t feeling the best when she left not ten minutes earlier. No matter. She’d returned to the hotel. Heartbreak Hotel like you’d never have guessed! I thought of going down to her parents but still wasn’t sure where they stood since we broke up and all the rest of it back then having only seen the father in his yellow Dolomite or on the street a few times at a safe distance and never at all in the bank as he’d always be hidden away in his old office like one of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. Not that she ever gave me the time of day anyway after that night before hoofing it off to Dublin even if Henry Fonda had his way with Claudia Cardinale Once Upon A Time without having to answer to her or anyone else apart from The Harmonica Man. You’d hardly ever see the mother either and we’d often wonder what she was doing there in the first place except for early Mass on Sunday and sure I’d never be up for that but sometimes the two of them would be seen out in Fitz’s for Sunday lunch if they weren’t off to Dublin in the old Dolomite visiting herself of a weekend when me and the lads would be down in O’Donovan’s for the Sunday cure and sandwich. Sure ’twas going on nine already after I’d had a few pints to take in the bad news and all but still enough time to see The Virginian in the hotel where I could get more news from The Snipe maybe which got me thinking again 12
so I had a quick one for the road. Look at after all these months for God’s sake. Weren’t we both older now. Older and wiser and all? Even Henry Fonda was a bad guy once in Once Upon A Time In The West and anyway what’s one more day after five-hundred or what have you? She’d be out in O’Donovan’s for sure on Saturday with her Liz Taylor hair and her shiny high heels and black stockings. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf my arse! Off to The Virginian and back for the darts before another night was lost like The Alamo. Eye of the bull in the eye of the storm as The Snipe would say when he dared you. Tomorrow would be another day for Miss Scarlett after all. ’Twas the same mad rush next morning after the night before and all when I bolted off to O’Donovan’s like Hop Along Cassidy with this feeling in my crotch that my underpants were on back to front. Not for the first time either didn’t I forget to brylcream the old quiff before leaving but that was no bother as I’d always have an emergency ration wrapped in a small wad of silver paper in the darts pocket of my jacket along with some minty toothpaste in a second wrap for the old smokes. I made a proper old hames of it though one night in the jacks during a break from the darts when my blood was up like Davy Crockett. Hadn’t the old quiff collapsed right down to my nose from all that tension and manoeuveration don’t you know and sure there was maguffins and his emergency wraps combing the hair back in the jacks like Elvis with a sliver of toothpaste! O’Donovan’s was like sardines at lunchtime. Were they all there for their toasted specials or what? Best in town they were though so I had one as usual. The form was good too in spite of the night before and I was looking forward to the evening ahead. Sorted out the underpants in the jacks and got the bit of Brylcream into my scalp no bother before going back to the bar for a hair of the dog. After the cure the 13
stage was set as I placed a stool by the payphone to ring the parents and check on herself in the wake of the night before when double-dared by The Snipe and all with the perfect excuse for a bullseye result in the eye of the storm. So I grabbed a quick pint and chaser and went over to the phone in my hour of need. She’d left said the mother gruff as a sow never asking my name. Wasn’t feeling the best when she got up but drove off without breakfast and with a short goodbye she hung up. What if herself had answered it only dawned on me then. What odds. Probably already in Dublin by the time I put down the phone. Farewell my lovely! Ah but hush. She’d be back in a month surely if not in a week or two or who knows. Of course she’d return like the green leaves of summer and the pint The Snipe owed me for calling his dare. Nobody knew what to think after her parents left for Dublin the following Friday and didn’t return. There was gossip galore of course but nothing in the pubs going back long enough for a man to get thinking of making himself scarce. The dogs in the street could wag their tongues and tales till the cat caught them for all I cared. I was right too ’cos ’twas a year and more before I was let go from that excuse of a job in the crematorium which wasn’t my fault either in spite of the rumours that did the rounds and anyway there was fierce unemployment in the place by then and I wasn’t the only hombre who had to saddle up and make tracks not just from the crematorium either I’ll have you know. But that’s a different matter entirely which had nothing to do with the bombshell that was dropped on us not long after her mother and father left for Dublin and never came back. You could hear the gasps among the congregation from my usual pew at the back when the announcement came from the pulpit at 11o’clock Mass on that Sunday after the Assumption and the deadly hush that filled the church as the parish 14
priest delivered his eulogy ….suddenly summoned to Our Eternal Father after a short illness…. a battle that ended on the feast of the Immaculate Virgin herself…. within weeks of her 21st birthday….Not a sinner as much as coughed except for one of the Morrison twins who let out a bit of a bawl for a few seconds in sympathy. Even the standing agnostics at the back were on one knee with caps in hand and their heads all bent as they’d only do when the altar bell would ring to signal the miracle of transubstantiation or what have you. ’Twas as if the whole world had stopped spinning like you’d often think well past closing time of a Sunday all quiet when there’d be hardly a soul left in the pub but yours truly imagining herself in her knee-length skirt and all the rest of it with those eyes all alive in a storm belting out Que Sera Sera and then The Green Leaves of Summer calling to me and me back in vain like the echoes of that kid at the end of Shane. Everything took a change for the worse from then on don’t you know at a pace just as fast as a night on the town. The Duke was one of the first to leave the territory having lost his job at the butchers and wasn’t the old chipper locked up as tight as Fort Knox that night when the starving cavalry from O’Donovan’s rode up for supplies. Old Ma Keeffe was ninety-two before she passed on and her spinster daughter came back from Coventry to run the shop that was willed to her. Johnny got his cards quicker than Doc Holliday as soon as she came home like the old cow that she was. He took the caravan with him since no-one else would have it as a going concern except for the wife and babbies and I don’t have to tell you that after he trailed off into the sunset that that was the end of my Gettysburger and bullets. It wasn’t long after before The Snipe was on the next stage to Deadwood. His brother had a job with digs and all lined up for him on the Liverpool docks fair dues to 15
him. We never got to have a last fling of the arrows as he’d been saving his labour money for the trip over weeks before. Sure hadn’t The Duke already hit the trail faster than The Lone Ranger and any hope of a final farewell lay buried between Wounded Knee and The Little Big Horn. But now that The Snipe was out of the picture with his Jim Bowie knife you might say that that left Davy Crockett here in pole position defending the old oche at The Alamo which was only proper order too if you think about it when my pockets started bulging again with a few dollars more on Saturday nights you know the way Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid’s did at the poker till I threw it all in. The Quiet Man had to take time off from the creamery which was no harm either after having a seizure or whatever in the church on the Sunday of the All Ireland. Sure we all thought he’d dropped dead without a sound out of him there and then after some agnostics and myself at the back carried him out to the churchyard where the cemetery was hardly ten paces away from us mind. The town doctor was sent for even though he was an old Protestant from the North and would’ve been in the other church with the fewer faithful at the time but there was no call for him anyway as we heard a wheeze and then a snort when The Quiet Man opened his eyes all surprised like a mesmerised mouse and all desperate for a drink of water. Lucky for him I’d the old naggin in my inside pocket and by the time the doctor came round wasn’t he sitting up well back to life and blowing like the last trumpet I can tell you with his Miraculous Medal in one hand and dentures in the other and his mangled old glasses gawking up at us from the holy ground. There was nobody in charge of the creamery for the next few weeks and I was doing a Trampas without The Virginian around while the craic was savage I swear. Sure what would you expect in a town without 16
deputies. The Garda station used to house a couple of guards and an old sergeant when I was growing up but the two young buckos got transferred out of it leaving just the auld fella here before I was big enough to face them off at the oche. And with every passing year the old barracks fell further into disrepair like our old sergeant did till in the end it began to look more like the ruins of The Alamo. We never heard the last of it though when The Quiet Man came back with his inhaler and a new pair of specs. They must have operated on the old brain too the way he’d throw fits an odd time like Mick Jagger in Ned Kelly with his accusations and aspersions not least in my direction mind and his old teeth slipping up and down like Dracula’s! There’s gratitude for you says I to the crematorium lads over a pint after raising him up off the church floor and bringing him back to life with my old naggin and all just like Lazarus and a face on him as white as milk only a dart’s flight away from Boot Hill. Sure the dogs in the street were wagging their tales again wouldn’t you know and the pubs were full of it too apart from Fitz’s that had to shut shop what with everything taking a turn for the worse and all. Even The Virginian left us just as we got thinking he’d go on forever and when they tried to bring him back with The Men from Shiloh sure that didn’t last drinking-up time. The new bank manager surprised the eyes out of me though being a dead ringer for Trampas without the accent of course from the Midlands and not much older either. ’Twas a pity he didn’t take a drink or throw a dart when I asked him as he’d nearly always be off to the city every weekend anyway to meet his intended. I never heard from The Snipe again nor ever knew what became of him in the eye of the storm except for his Ma telling us that he got over to Liverpool alright but was back on the labour a few weeks 17
later staying with his brother in their digs on the docks. Little Big Man! Not even a scratch on a stamp before I had to make tracks myself but The Duke like the gent that he was sent us a card at Christmas addressed to The Good The Bad and The Ugly of O’Donovan’s with a little postscript after his Happy New Year which simply said Remember the Gettysburger! And I knew you know that that was meant personally for me. The Quiet Man dropped dead for good suddenly during the fierce weather of January when the turnout for his burial after Mass was dead low in the snow except for some relatives and half a dozen parishioners and myself and three lads and the secretary from the crematorium. He wasn’t even cold in his grave before being replaced by this sour old balooba we called Cocheese who could eat up the whole creamery for breakfast and spit you out like chewed tobacco which he did in time like Santa Anna did to The Alamo. Sure we knew from the start that the wrong man had gone and died on us in the end. Anyhow that’s how it got from bad to worse don’t you know after herself went away with the cancer and never came back. And another thing said she in short order that night I went deaf bombarded and all like the walls of The Alamo. ’Twas that other thing she said about our first picture together Once Upon A Time in The West which she’d never have gone to see in the first place but for mixing it up with How The West Was Won – can you credit it - when Debbie Reynolds couldn’t stop singing about building a home in the meadow. Isn’t it strange all the same how a song can run through you and get stuck inside like a lance the way The Green Leaves of Summer plunged into my gut with the belt of a bullet or a dart dead on target though you’d only half know the first verse to start with. ’Twas days before that 13th and final morning at the siege of the San Antonio Mission let me tell you when Colonel 18
William Travis drew his sword across the sand knowing all too well that Sam Houston’s cavalry would not be riding to their rescue in the eye of the storm as he addressed the doomed garrison of Jim Bowie’s Texans and Davy Crockett’s Tennesseans about the fate Santa Anna had in mind for them. So you’d find yourself standing over the longest pint long after its own little storm had settled till the glass would be up to your lips again just like The Harmonica Man blowing Once Upon A Time and then everything else to bits like the walls of the San Antonio Mission. There’d be a few of us still left as there was at The Alamo counting off the days if the walls still had ears to hear that double-top shot piercing its target. Right between the eyes! The Snipe would yahoo at the oche. Like Liberty Valance! And the man who shot him! My turn to throw. Davy Crockett…king of the wild frontier! But whether your glass was half empty or half full wasn’t it all going down faster than a night on the town.Ah yes! Martha Jane Canary was her name. Calamity Jane. Wild Bill Hicok’s flame. Once I Had a Secret Love and what have you before he got shot in the back holding a dead man’s hand in the middle of a game of draw poker and was buried with his rifle until Martha Jane followed on in her own good time to be laid down at last beside them both. There’d’ve been loads in that for The Duke to chew on in better days and a Gettysburger in the bag for sure if I’da bet him. Look what else could you say in all fairness I swear only that I didn’t much bother with O’Donovan’s any more or Sunday Mass for that matter till my own turn came to cry hi-ho Silver. The hotel became more to my liking.They turned the snug into a little darts room even if I’d hung up my own arrows by then and what odd bit of action there was to be seen could be caught in the old Jameson mirror. But the jagged strip of painted cardboard we’d tacked on the door years before 19
remained: OK CORRAL. The colour got better on the TV too when they moved it inside the bar. So did their toasted specials. Even the old jacks had a new smell of Jeyes Fluid and mothballs which in its own yucky way was refreshing. The rest of the pubs were preoccupied with jobs and the lads that had to leave in search of them while the farmers as ever carried on grousing about the price of milk and silage. But the talk went on in the hotel too wouldn’t you know with the cost of drink in the new money on everyone’s lips and the shame of it all anyway to have gone metric. Sure everything was on the way out but didn’t we know it was coming like a first rumble of thunder or that storm in her eyes and the end of the ten-bob note. And even if the old Astor had closed down because of the colour TV and hard times you might say I started getting into the habit of walking from the hotel on weekends with the old naggin and smokes and all and taking the long way home where sometimes the moon and the stars could be seen flickering and twinkling through the elms and the sycamores.
****************************************
Ray Rosenstock 23 Clarinda Park West Dún Laoghaire Co Dublin IRELAND
20
21