The Troubles Read online

  CHATPER 25: Nuair a bhionn an t-ol istigh, bionn an chiall amuigh. (When the drink is in, the sense is out)

  Kiera Flanagan…The amber liquid is broiling an ulcer deep in the core of my innards. I had gone through every cranny of the house and landed with a thud at my Father’s bar of patriotically Irish whiskeys. The bottle had touched my lips with such a need that I nursed until I gasped for air. Perhaps the only way to feel is to feel the white-hot pain of alcohol poisoning my organs in a slow yet sincere form of suicide. I am as empty as the great open sky above as I mimic a beleaguered mourner. Funeral proceedings were mine alone to prepare and respectfully deliver as my father’s accountant sat before me going over the meager Flanagan estate. He had squarely asked me, “Lass are ya to be betrothed? I can’t imagine a fair child alone in that house with it in that condition to be maintained.” I wanted to tear out his throat and scream neither can I and damn you and Father for not so subtly coveting a man in place of a girl. I barely betrayed my grieving exterior as I meekly signed each document and left the building fleeing from the anxiety the reality-inducing situation had brought on.

  The Shankill Methodist church was crowded between buildings within the fever of the Middle Shankill suburb. Washed with a cloudy film across the sparse group of my extended relatives was the tension and trepidation of entering a site, which was now clearly being targeted. “I will not risk me life and limb. I’m sorry!” my aunt declared not so mutedly, allowing further ripples of fear to ruminate and create suspicion.

  I wearily attended to the wide-eyed furiously blinking, elder sister of my brother. “Please Aunt Sarah, this is what father would have wanted.”

  “Nay. He would have wished us all to stay home, away from fear of death,” the matriarch insisted, taking her stout body upon the steps and blockading us from barging through the heavy iron doors. As if in some universal synchronism, a booming loud bang was heard as our huddled mass all clamored wildly and some fleeing not so heroically, screaming bloody murder, as forcefully as so many elderly lungs could. My senses guided me as I smelled the crisp clear winter air for there was no scent of fire nor gun smoke and as my hooded eyes scanned the narrow street left then right, I could see in the midday light, not a thing out of the usual character of common street life. The people closest to me all appeared to be assessing the situation similarly allowing our judgments to guide us. Moments ticked slowly until my young cousin, a mechanic, loudly determined it was but a car engine back firing which allowed the group an ease to the adrenaline that shone wickedly in every eye. Without any contention from myself, the assigned preacher proclaimed civilly that he would allow the service to continue in the Shankill Methodist Churches graveyard as to appease any fraught superstitions.

  “Let’s head out for wee dander folks,’’ the preacher stated. His brown shrouded face wore sad detachment and perhaps exhaustion as he gave the funeral address that I had mulled over and decided upon, thinking to please Mother and Father.

  “Psalm 90: Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst form, the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

  Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, return, ye children of men.

  For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

  Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which growth up.

  In the morning it flourisheth , and growth up; In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.”

  Loud, coughing sobs poured frantically from Aunt Sarah who had placed herself to the right of the preacher, thus assuming leadership. Without so much as a twitch to his lip, the preacher carried on.

  ‘’The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength, they be fourscore years, yet it is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

  Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.

  And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. ‘’

  The remnants of last evening’s liquor swirled in a perfect storm inside my foggy mind as the prayer simultaneously eased and yet put every stable foundation I have ever known in disarray. I squinted with blurred sight at the December sun that shone a burnished gold through wilting yellow edged green leaves breathing life upon the wintering foliage. As I raised the pale skin of my face to placate to the rare sunlight I gulped in the fresh nipping air.

  “I truly cannot imagine a life where me brother Piaris is not here for me to chide and his wife Una was like me very own flesh and blood.’’ Again Aunt Sarah was crowing garishly amongst a trapped group of relatives as they formed a misshapen circle around her and with little avail attempted to comfort her. I fixed my gaze upon my father’s only living sibling and marveled at the genetically similar features on her lined face. With a rare impish thought, I curled a thin smile, as it was glaringly apparent the woman was subconsciously sucking the air dry for her own need of constant, coddling attention. ‘’Oh my why, Piaris? Ya will be the death of me!”

  With a tinge of mockery her hand dramatically fanned her apple red chubby cheeks. “There, there, t’is the only way. They are with the lord. We should get Mother to her gaff. She’s obviously bate.’’ Her adult daughter, whom had received every genetic trait possible when she was born, gave me a pointed look of consternation and turned to walk away. The family I felt I barely knew, although we had lived with them but weeks earlier during our homes fiery invasion, like newborn blind mice, trailed Aunt Sarah’s emotionally garish departure. The shock and irony that I was not dealt the same level of sympathy angered me as I could feel the lasting effects of whiskey’s irrationality in my lithe physique and with keen olfactory senses smelled the sour stink of drink perspiring from my agitated pores. I was the godforsaken one alone and now sullied. Ena’s parents had restrained her will to accompany me to my parent’s funeral. Tearfully she wept weakly and broken, as she had left the threshold of my empty home.

  “Kiera I must go to their gaff!’’ she had gasped. “Da will give me a batin’ if I dare put meself in direct peril by going to the West Kirk Church. But as soon as ya return give me a ring and no matter what, even if I must creep out an open window, I’ll come over.’’ I had little energy for restraint but nevertheless, the moment her warm-blooded body left me, the weight of the abject emancipation I felt, cut like a hot blade piercing it’s blade through my ribs deep into my heart.

  The weight of semi-frozen deep brown dirt weighed heavily upon glinting silver shovels which moved in an artificially sub-human formation, maneuvering the native terrain of fertile topsoil; heavy wet mud, light grains of sand and particles of green peat moss peaked through the rich earth, as broken pieces of city gravel crashed onto the two perfectly rectangular coffins which lay lonely and subterranean in the six foot deep grave. The thudding of the dirt was perhaps too monotonous and methodical and it began to irritate me as I stared down like a lifeless drone at the only real love I have ever known awaited to disappear under a ton of terra firma.

  Piaris Flanagan had been orphaned by the suckling age of two and had been left in the care of my great grandparents along with his two close in age older siblings. Undoubtedly, this common occurrence had imprinted upon him that strictness of the law was the only maneuver in polite society, as the generous age gap between himself and his legal guardians was a gaping one. My grandmother had succumbed to the of modern age trivial ailments of home birthing and had gasped her last breath seconds before my father had screamed into life. My grandfather’s tale is the more infamous one, as the man I never met, had tirelessly milled on the hull of the RMS Titanic and through his own ingenuity acquired a respectable job as a crewmember on the 1912’s disastrous maiden voyage. His watery grave seemed to
haunt Father as he avoided the ocean like a plague and wickedly cursed at the violent storms the Irish Sea drew. My mother Una, perhaps too beautiful, for a commonplace Irishmen, seemed unaware of his insecurities and delighted in taking me to the ocean shore and would partake like a kid sister frolicking in the surf as Father had clucked nervously some distance away.

  The recent expenditure of morbid, bereaved and ultimately dismal emotions exhausted me and had bankrupted any reserves I might have had. The weeping had been loud and aggressive at times and at others weak and pitiful. I had fallen asleep at moments of false distraction only to wake seconds later as though a shotgun had ripped through my very core.

  The cold earth beneath felt inviting and as my legs pleaded I sat next to the now covered grave, sights against a neighboring recently constructed headstone. I did not look at the etched in granite name and age of the deceased, as I could no longer humanize the dead in this overflowing graveyard, as that would imply to my broken mind that Mother and Father rested here as well. Once again, the inviting chill of December’s dusk kept me roused though sleep kept beckoning. My recent bout of hypothermia still marred my rosy pink flesh and hypersensitivity to the cold brought tears to my eyes as liquid mucous streamed down my ashen face. One could mistake my physical reaction as grief and pass me by but as I sat like a small child sullenly having a spoiled temper tantrum, in a way I had succumbed to the dismal scene. Mercifully, a strong male voice reached out through my fog of grief and I guided my eyes up past long legs that stood like thin, steady birch tree trunks, looking upon a navy blue wool winter’s jacket with worn cuffs and in desperate need of darning, finally resting my teary sight upon a unkempt, cotton soft beard of white that bordered a plainly ordinary smile of an upper middle aged man.

  “Kiera Flanagan. Is that ya? Poor dear bure.’’

  His voice sounded distinctly intimate as the rough texture peeked my memory and with excitement I immediately recognized my former history professor. “Mr. Sloan! Oh my, excuse me! Hello!’’ I stood, blood rapidly rushing to my already throbbing head. ‘’What are ya doing here?” My voice broke loud and slightly accusatory in the grim calm of eve in the graveyard.

  “Well Ms. Flanagan, I am here to pay me respects.’’ Immediately I convulsed and the sob within that was no longer buried deep bellowed out in an uncomfortable response.

  “Aye, of course ya were. Why else? Why else?’’

  “I can only tell ya, me dear, that I am with ya, to find a way to the other side of this fire and brimstone.’’

  Two years ago with my history professor, Lanary Sloan, as my guide, I had partaken with my own terra offerings in respect to the Tuatha de Danaan, which I had retrieved from the natural, landscape surrounding the earthly shrine buried deep in the Hill of Tara. Trust and my own verdant earnestness for knowledge had developed over time, as the man had revealed in quiet moments during our study sessions, that he was a high priest of the Order of the Verdant River. His crafted sanctuary of pagan worship had been manifested by his determined unwavering devotedness to Ireland’s entirely rich pagan narrative, perhaps the only truly authentic recording of the land’s history.

  “Do ya suspect beora, yer Ma and Da are to entice ya to down the down below?” He gestured to the darkened hard turf that bulged below. ‘’Is that where they are Kiera? Or is it that they are now atoning for their sins at the gates of Heaven?’’

  “Oh God, Lanary. I haven’t a clue to whom I pray for me kin’s spirits. Am I to herald them with me test of faith into some purgatory between where their souls will never rest?’’

  True familiar blue eyes beckoned and coaxed the answers from me. ‘’They are where they are meant to be. Aye child Piaris and Una Flanagan are truly sacrosanct and ya will be gifted as their familiar for ye’re devotion. Ya’ve always been me most devoted pupil.” Offputtingly notes of intimidation flickered briefly between the comforting sentiments as I violently shivered, quaking from the strange tone in my Professor’s conciliation and also from the freezing mist particles that billowed like soft clouds throughout the graveyard. The dense fog rested and shrouded the gravestones blanketing and obscuring the ornate crosses, which lined every site, allowing the heavy carved stone crucifixes a hallucinatory floating effect. “Shall we have at it then, Kiera Hi? Let’s take ya to yer gaff.’’ That word rung like a booming church tower bell and I sorely winced my headache only worsening.

  “Aye, Mr. Lanary Sloan. Would ya be so kind? I’m knackered.’’ Walking arm in arm with the courteous man who dwarfed my petite figure with his presence, in my soon to be forgotten footprints, I left the haze of the graveyard and the ceaselessly long day behind me.

  CHAPTER 26: Ni mar a shiltear a bhitear. (Things aren’t as they seem)

  Alastar Taggart…December 12th 1971, two weeks until Christmas.

  A bedraggled Bobby Sands had slammed on the front door, vibrating the thin windowpane, which barely hid the souls within from the ghouls outside, clamoring loudly for me to accompany him to Malvern Street in the chiefly Protestant Shankill Road area. ‘’Alastar get the hell down here!’’ He had desperately crowed from the stoop into the still dawn as I had pulled up my stiff blue jeans over taught angular hips glancing at the clock that irritatingly chimed in the center of the sparsely decorated wall. It had been barely 6 am. I had hurried down the upstairs hallway passing by my sibling’s two conjoined bedrooms while the assaulting pounding wakened two out of the six inhabitants in our house. The sleeping quarters embodied a strong aroma of pubescent male musk and feminine perfume, which collided with the humid dampness the declining walls, could barely contain.

  “I’ve got the door. Don’t ya worry and go back to sleep!’’

  “Alastar, do ya think it’s Quinn?’’ asked our sister, Talulla. Quinn had been absent for a week and a half and all inhabitants were equally distressed and all anxiously awaiting news of him.

  “I hope it is. He might be hurt, ya never know, but I promise ya, if this is not him, I’m to bring him home!’’ My little sister’s sleepy, clouded eyes tried their best to bestow belief in my hollow sounding words, but in the climate of the day, her fear stared stiff back at me. “Why don’t ya make Da a pot of tea, Talulla?’’ As she turned away, I caught a glimpse of the rush of tears that were threatening to pour down her porcelain, pale cheek.

  “Do ya think I came down the Lagan in a bubble, Alastar?’’ Before I could proceed to comfort our youngest sister, Bobby Sands made his unsolicited entry into our home and seized my navy jacket, which was draped over the staircase, and then he gripped my wrist with talon-like strength.

  “Damn it, Alastar. We must go! He’s there… it’s yer brother!” He hissed, spitting through gritted teeth and as noiselessly as we could, we left my childhood home, in all appearances for the last time and stepped into the gray dawn.

  ‘FENIAN SCUM’ were the scrawled words carved crudely across the naked, bony torso of our mutilated fifteen-year-old brother. His face was so beaten and blackened that he only was recognized and identified by the simple gold watch he had worn proudly, a reminder and heirloom from my Father of more prosperous times, the gift a glimpse into our humble childhood. Indicative, was that his clothing was stripped, but the precious valuable gold left on his dainty wrist as an ambiguous message. He was clearly murdered for his religion and all else of his physical being, disposable, as the sadistic graffiti on his bare skin was designed to imply, he was the scum to be eradicated. The smell of putrid rot and early decomposition hit me like a wall of Biblical locusts baring down and grinding into every exposed pore and orifice. An ashen-faced Bobby and the now growing crowd stammered with astonishment. “Holy Shite. There’s no blood. The boy has been stick like a pig and drained.’’

  ‘’The poor child, who is that ragin’ feen by his side?’’

  ‘’Me name is Alastar Taggart and this child...’’ I had sarcastically drawled out the sentence with derision, for all the spectators to hear, my coldness overtly declaring action again
st my unknown enemies. “This youngin’ is Quinn Taggart and he will be avenged!’’

  Like the broken rag doll my sister had carried her entire childhood, he had lain limp in my strained, powerful hold. I tied me jacket around me nose and mouth to suppress the stink of decaying flesh as cold air rushed like a phantom over my body, cursing me with its fowl breath. I was now a mythical dragon and permeated deep within was a fire so hot that the sharp, cold’s nipping sting, incited little reaction as I forged forward, carrying my virgin brother. He looked up at me with open, clouded and vacant gray eyes , his throat slit, bloodless, as in a sick, Cheshire smile.

  I sunk to my knees as Lanary Sloan and Bobby Sands took the weight of my brother, but his metaphysical touch lingered and I lay grounded. He was now being shrouded in a gauzy linen cloth and being ushered in a private hearse to beyond Belfast’s perimeter. I could not bear the notion that he would not be guided into Valhalla as beyond anyone I have ever known and loved, this boy, had been a righteous foe and had earned the right to fight alongside the warriors in Valhalla and Folkvangr. He would assist the gods in the foretold battle, which was prophesied to occur during Ragnarok, the momentous apocalyptic war that would occur at the end of the age of all gods and of mortal man. Had his death been a natural occurrence, his soul, potentially, could have gone to rest in The Summerland, to experience sensual pleasures and blissful happiness before reincarnating as an evolution of sorts or there was the possibility on the virtue of his young age and therefore untarnished spirit, he would forever rest in the blessed realm, either across the water, or under the earth which is the land of eternal youth, also known as the Otherworld, the Tir na n’Og.