The Troubles Read online

  My parent’s marital bed’s frame heaves and groans over the weight of our two bodies as we tumble upon it. Alastar, in mid embrace, whispers in a guttural tone with his pronounced northern accent becoming unintelligible, his hot breath against my glistening swelling lips, “If yer Da was with us I’d be certain to ask him for his beautiful only daughter’s hand.’’ My eyes swell with teardrops and as they cascade down my cheeks, he kisses away once more, the sadness, yet my bodily fluid is culminating with his intense and passionate embrace. Our clothing falls artfully in a multicolored heap to the floor, as each article is singularly removed and we take the time to regard one another’s naked form. As he takes off my leggings, I lie still on my back watching the disintegrating roofing tiles pursing and leaking in a puddle by the window. I wince painfully; caught in the rush of the moment for I have momentarily forgotten the nasty wound on my otherwise healthy upper thigh. The room is shadowed and dimly lit from the exposed light peering through the perimeter of the closed door. The rain pounds its ever-steady drum on the thin glass as it obscures any outdoor visibility beyond a few feet. My heart is thudding so loudly I am grateful for the ambient reciprocation the weather has created. The company of a naked man’s body in my grasp is so foreign though exciting, that I yearn to touch him further. My dainty, exploratory fingers pull his damp slightly oily hair and I massage the nape of his neck as I brazenly coax his head even closure to mine. Our physical proximity is so intertwined I cannot decipher whose writhing limb is whose. My womanly apex opens as he tears my legs apart with his immense strength. The coupling is a swift passionate one from the ease of my readiness and our burgeoning love. My trust is with Alastar and I allow him to guide my unskilled hands as he brings me to an inaugural crest of pleasure. In our hushed physical expression we affirm our abiding and binding love in feathered kisses with my lips colliding with the salt-sweated peaks and valleys of Alastar’s torso. My hunger is intensifying as his passionate embrace bears down into me, his exploration insistent yet receptive to my acknowledgements and sighs of encouragement and I fall into a deep warm sleep, after a passionate post coital embrace, being satiated and exhausted.

  My young limbs feel strange and anew when I awaken. I try to stretch and curl my toes with exulted pleasure, as I lie completely naked on the gently heaving and sparsely haired chest of my sleeping partner. I had fallen asleep rather quickly alongside him, not bothering to check on Ena and the men whom when I last saw them were deposited in my parlor room. I pray that my friend used her wits and sent them home. Guilt and disgust piques for a moment for the embarrassment I may have caused my fragile houseguest. Perhaps it is the recklessness of my young age but this by far, is the most adventurous and amoral I have ever been. Last night, I reveled in it and lived each hauntingly intense moment, but now in the predawn light I am filled with regret. What have I done? In Mother and Father’s bedroom no less! I feel something dried and chapped underneath my bare bottom and finally when I maneuver my body with the white linen covering cold and pert, blush pink nipples, I gasp. The uncomfortable sediment is blood that has dried and stained the consummately hand laundered sheets. It is my own blood.

  Whilst allowing the consumed Alastar to remain sleeping, I sneak a final glance at his fine feathered, black eyelashes that rest upon no longer intimidating sharp cheekbones now in sleep repose. My heart quickens at his refinement and though the room is cool, my half clothed body radiates with desirous heat. Memories flash as the night’s torrent of sensations whirr through me. Reaching down with a creak in the floorboard, I run my hand from his high forehead to his crown, lavishing each silken, raven strand through my fingers as though I truly am touching a luxurious fabric. I stretch forward and kiss the top of his forehead, my lips forming a wet print on his shiny, smooth skin.

  I make my way into the cold morning air of the bathroom and sit myself into the bathtub allowing the steaming hot water to sanitize and purify me from last night. Having grabbed at a singular book of Irish myths and deities from a packed box in my bedroom, I lie back in the bronzed claw footed porcelain tub. As I relax in the water, I leisurely flip the pages serendipitously, settling upon the tale of the Irish Goddess Danu, one of our oldest deities, having been the mother of the gods and the Tuatha de Dannan, the first tribe to inhabit our emerald isle. She is the goddess of fertility and abundance; she is also known to be an earth goddess of wind and wisdom. My stomach intuitively flutters signally to me this is of importance and I drop the well-read book into the steaming five inches water. This has been my first time. I can’t be!

  I delicately cleanse my no longer virginal body in the water, adding scalding liters every few minutes to maintain the shallow level, steam temperature. Ena knocks on the door and I am in a compromised position by the time I have allowed her entry as I had rescinded out of the purifying baptismal to put on a knee length black skirt over thick woolen gray stockings and also had avoided the mirror to quell the vanity that Alastar’s compliments had bestowed upon me in my undress.

  Ena’s slightly more alert eyes plead with me for details but she is too polite to outright ask what has transpired in the upstairs of this definitely not soundproof abode. I cast my eyes downward as she silently begins to braid my thick, still moist tendrils.

  ’’Ya got the most beautiful of the Irish hair, Kiera. Enough of the red for ya to know yer homeland, but not so much ya flare in the dark shadows of the moonlit sky.’’

  ’Thanks Ena.’’ I smile lavishing in the massage of the brush. “Me mom would brush me hair for me.’’

  ‘’Aye, I know she did. So did mine. ‘’Our shared loss is of such great magnitude that the most miniscule of daily routines incites a raw flare-up of retrospection.

  CHAPTER 35: Cu do chu ri leigeadh (Hold back your do till the dear falls)

  Lanary Sloan…Is it time Father? My father is Daghda the distinct figure in the mist hovering watching all of his children. He is the good god and while the many of his children are responsible for singular aspects of the earthly realm such as my sister Brighit the goddess of the countryside and my all too powerful brother Lear the god of the sea. I am the greatest of all of Daghda’s offspring for I am the god of everything Lugh; the misty clouds in the sky, the rain soaked grass below, and the swells of saltwater that sway and crash upon craggy rocks. I am the god of life itself, a unified deity.

  I heard them like children embarking upon a new adventure, whispering, exploring, and yearning as I respectfully left the Flanagan threshold. I am so quiet I believe myself to be invisible. There are no more questions to be asked of me. Let them disregard me for the old man who has cloaked his skin to me, Lugh. As I am life itself, I am permitted to give it and to take it. A new life has been given to Kiera and Alastar and now the bronze scale must be balanced.

  CHAPTER 36: An neach nach cinn na chadal cha chinn e na dhuisg

  (He who will not prosper in his sleep, will not prosper when awake)

  Alastar Taggart…There is a face before me and as much as I try, I cannot make out the features of a lilting profile because the muddled chalk lines morph and list as though they are a boat on a troubled sea. This nauseates me with seasickness but I am drawn to the hominid entity out of eye’s reach. I focus with all my flawed capacity as my brother’s boyish image appears and disappears like a sunburst breaking through clouds.

  “Quinn where have ya been?” There is no answer to my question, just another mutation, but this time worn antlers and an animalistic definition transform what is left of his handsome, youthful image. I do not fear the man with bearded jaw and antlers breaking through his long maned scalp clawing in either direction and as he moves closer and closer the antlers commence to eerily scratch the unseen surface between us. The thorny sound multiplies in pitch till my eardrums plead for a reprisal but awful; coarse laughter joins in the noise as though a man is roaring through a mouth of heavy dirt.

  I awake with sweat having drenched Kiera’s sheets, which I have entangled like a noose around my
neck and Bobby Sands is standing half way through an open wooden door, his hand still grasping the brass nob. “Mate, I thought I heard a scream! Ya all right?’’ I look at him lost in a dreamland in need of a search party. My mouth is dry and my words fumble clumsily and spill hastily as I regain my composure.

  ‘’Aye yer a fine man. Did Lanary and ya leave last night?’’ I feign an insincere grin. “Have ya seen me girl?”

  Bobby’s wide set eyes, the color of lightly brewed tea, crinkle in amusement. ‘’Aye we did…just came back this morn. That’s all it took to run Kiera away, aye?’’

  I sit up swinging my branch like legs to the icy cold floor and the beds creaks again, perhaps wistful it’s bedmates are abandoning it. I look down at my glistening muscles bonded tight to dense bones and pick up my jeans.

  “Bobby how ‘bout a cup o tea?’’

  His congenial demeanor is both naïve but loyally kind. ’’Aye see ya downstairs.’’

  ’’Find me Kiera!’’ My request drifts down the stairs Bobby has descended. Faint footsteps are heard and I hear a giggle the sound of chimes being kissed by the wind with a faint male grunt of recognition. At once wide set almond eyes are perched in the doorframe as the mid-morning light pours in from the lone window framing her face angelically. I steal a glimpse at the delicate frame of her body. It was just the night before when I had consumed her virtue and organically without a single further thought. My morning’s passion ignites swiftly and with mechanical precision. I grin as a blush of awareness pools on the crest of her cheek. “Thought I ran ya off,’’ I snidely bemuse, striding across the worn floor boards in a few long legged strides.

  ’’Ya forgot Mr. Taggart. T’is me home and ya are me guest.” Kiera is dressed in a somewhat formal black skirt over gray darned stocking, topped by a white, crisp dress shirt. The skirt obscures the rise and curve of her bottom and the stockings are thick and look to be in need of further repair or replacement. The white shirt is tucked into her skirt emphasizing her delicate waist so painstakingly cylindrical my arms itch to clasp and encompass her with my protracted embrace. The top button of the shirt appears to have been forgotten and her clavicle glistens like a smooth nectarine bare of fuzz, silken and supple to the touch. Her fingers dance a shy ballet in the sunburst of dust floating through the empty space before her. Her eyes dart everywhere in the room but to me and I awkwardly assess the situation.

  “Would ya like for me to leave?’’

  A hot chafed mumble spills from her dry lips, which she is anxiously licking to moisten. ‘’Perhaps.’’

  Alarm springs to the fine hairs at the base of my neck and profusely, goose bumps begin their warning cascade down the surface of my skin. I look down at my naked forearm mimicking her sheepish doubt; my flesh looks like a plucked chicken as I rub absently attempting to bring circulation.

  “What I mean is, just today, I just need some time to think.” Kiera stutters and spits the words out all in one breath.

  ‘’Aye I see, but ya’d like to see me again?’’

  ‘’Aye, of course! I just have to see to Ena.’’

  ‘’Is there anything I can do?’’ I press her further trying to ingratiate myself into her life.

  She smiles her teeth bright like polished pearls. “Perhaps. Thank you Alastar.’’ As she rolls her tongue over the guttural vowels of my name I am reminded of our night’s honeyed words.

  “Kiera, did I hurt ya?’’ I am suddenly scared the answer could rip at the fabric of our harmonious union. She breathes in deep and I too breathe in with her.

  ‘’Nay not physically.

  “But the blood…”

  She cuts me off maroon with embarrassment. “Not physically, but this….” Her fingers glaze across my collarbone, “might be too fast for us, for me.’’

  ’’Aye, okay.’’ I am gruff and raw as the pain that sentence has dealt is too irrefutable to deny. I take one final fleeting look at the bedroom in the truth the day’s light uncovers, like walking upon a mirage in the desert to only have it evaporate with your proximity and like the illusion in the soft, ethereal edges of the moon’s glow. The truth is that all of Northern Ireland’s light holds some kind of eerie illusionary quality. The fog betrays the brightest of sunrises and though it may be only mid-afternoon the constant dull drum of overcast shadows gives the streets the calm atmosphere of the witching hour. The semblance of one’s daily lifestyle obscures patterns with climactic temperament.

  I walk alone and full of contradiction as I amble down the steaming cobblestone alley ways avoiding human contact both satisfied and in love but unsure and with trepidations of responsibility. Cleverly navigating behind busy street ways my legs take me to the eight-foot fencing at back of my childhood home. Etched with a longing that only one’s family can induce, I stare at the grimy and weathered brown brick two story home sandwiched claustrophobically and attached to an identical dwelling both to the right and the left. There is a tendril of acrid, dark smoke from coal burning curling from the unkempt chimney that is centered directly upon a highly cantilevered roof. There are three windows on the second story, not large enough to gain sight into the home, but I know, as my vantage point has consistently been an internal one, that their light and views have given breath and relief to my families living quarters.

  I can hear yelling and immediately I duck and perch myself on bended knees waiting to have my hiding place exposed. How sad and ironic that I am lurking in the shadows, behind a home that every morning I would scour, in an attempt to quell the exponential growth of dirt my siblings would dispense, as their brawls over rationed potatoes would literally smash dishes as if the children were young bulls in a china shop. Quinn had always been there in the center of the melee with a chipped tooth as penance, because no matter how boisterous and arrogant his swagger, his lithe, scrawny limbs simply could not answer for his smart mouth.

  I am here to retrieve a weapon buried in the earth beneath a mosaic of chipped, decades-old, stonework. The guns that come with the IRA come hand in hand with coerced indemnification. After the busted attempt for Gerry Adam’s penance concerning Bloody Sunday I have since been relegated to the sheathed, sharp blade shepherded safely in the leather backing of the inner membrane of my ankle boots. The physical amalgamation of Kiera Flanagan and I, has navigated me through the intermediary roadblocks one would face in the throes of establishing a courtship and I now feel affronted with a profound and weighted obligation for her safety. No, I am not a hero, nor a gentleman having scoffed at women’s pleas that they were damsels in need of rescue, which insinuated they were not the weaker of the species but the more manipulative. Kiera has shown me glimpses of cunning and perhaps I have just fallen under a black widow’s spell. She is, I discern, very alone in fact and most certainly in need of assistance.

  Sounds of children at play drift from the bedrooms of the house as my three younger siblings have returned from either school or the unsupervised extracurricular activities Belfast children fall prey to. I try to appease my guilt of having abandoned them by this small respite that at least they are home. Deep in my conscious I know my father, in surly stages of inebriation, is not much a safeguard against the streets allurement. I lurk in the shadows as the electric lights turn on inside our home, giving the darkness more girth. I feel safe here in my vantage point. I will wait until they have all gone to sleep and then I will retrieve the pistol for I take my place as a practiced spy.

  ‘’Would ya like me to give ya another shiner?’’ My littlest brother’s distinctive lilt barrels through the open window and into the brisk backyard air. Our sister, born eleven months after this brother squeals with mischievous delight. “Do yer best but ya’ve got nothin’ on Quinn, he’s a brute compared to ya.’’

  Killian growls as I strain to hear his response. “Don’t say his name or ya will join him!’’ I am appalled by his veiled threat and hold myself back from rushing in and thrashing the boy to his senses. This desire quickly absolves itself, as my
guilt is too powerful, for I have abandoned every one of my siblings.

  My eavesdropping unearths what can only be surmised as an infinitesimal elfin snivel as my kin of the female persuasion, has begun to wail. “Shut yer bake Killian! How dare ya! Da will knock yer ballix in!’’

  ‘‘Da will do no such thing, he’s as drunk as a rank scumbag and nay Quinn nor Alastar are here to stop me from scalping ya!’’

  The little girl’s whimpering begins to fizzle like a fuse on a blustery day as I hear Killian declare, asserting himself at the age of eight, that she is to get some shuteye and as the muscles in my neck strain and ache with the damp, cold of murky fog that has coiled around dusk, I can no longer hear their infantile quarrel and my mind has inadvertently become downcast and conscience-stricken. I look down at gloved hands and rub them together maniacally attempting to bring life into numb fingers. In one fail swoop I leap over the fence with nimble athleticism never failing to surprise me and I take the given blade from its sheath. For a moment, I admire the shine of silver as it reverberates blazingly in the spilling deluge of the interior lighting’s canopy and instantly the flashing silver, reminds me of the last night when Kiera’s cylindrical irises glowed radiantly in the apex of our ascendancy. Face to face colors saturate and fragrances bloom with deeper bouquets.

  The knife cuts into the ground’s solid winter permafrost and I have to clench numb fingers so they don’t fail with the thrusts and slip to slice themselves on the razor-sharp metal, the metal ore indiscriminate in its objective of self-defense. As I crouch and look at the small hole in the ground punctured beneath me, I mistakenly see Quinn’s shrouded body covered in brown dirt and as I gasp in gulps of air to vanquish fatigue, the scent of humid clay, soaked in rain, elicits another vision as though conjuring a spirit on Hallows Eve. I swipe my brow as though the physical gesture can vanquish my brother’s apparition. There is at least no malevolence to his ghost and this brings me relief. I can feel in the ground, the 9mm before I have sight of it and I quickly bring it up to my jacket to polish the wear of erosion. I kick at the dirt haphazardly to fill the hole and with one swift, final glance at the condensation on the kitchen window, ten feet before me; I manage to make an unremarkably discreet and pitiful exit into the night.