The Little Words Mean the Most

Revealed: My dad was Nostradamus

 

For my future, anyway: he predicted the whole thing, just the way it turned out.

         I am 73 now, as I write. A few months from now: 74.

         I was 17 then? We stood face-to-face in our tiny knotty-pine kitchen, in a starter home built because dad went to war and was entitled -- since he wasn't African-American -- to a low-cost G.I. Bill mortgage.

         Dad shook his head that day. He looked me in the eye. In an ashtray, an unfiltered Camel smoked away. He didn't drink much. But he smoked like a chimney, especially after the war. When he'd returned from overseas, his hair was unexpectedly white, the family legend went; attributed to artillery shelling during the Battle of the Bulge.

         Dad was strong. Reliable. He knew right from wrong. There was an insurmountable fence between the two: a fence built by religion and duty and expectations and fears.

         If he smirked in my face that day, it wasn't cruel. He just knew a lot more about life ... and the beating a full life could give you.

         The 1919 flu pandemic orphaned him and his lost brother, never seen again. Dad graduated from high school as a star athlete in 1929 ... into the Great Depression; how's that for lucky? He'd tended his bed-bound adoptive Catholic mother for years thereafter, while trying to sell shoes door to door and put greens and protein on the family table. He'd welded battleships when decent jobs returned locally as Hitler raised a stink. He'd married a clarinetist in an all-woman jazz band. Together they'd made my sister. The draft swept up dad, who fought in World War 2 as an infantry private. Upon return -- clinically responsible for child #2 (me) -- he'd taken a union job at a local factory. And stuck there at a machine, making rubber soles for decades. While his wife went by bus to night school in Boston. She earned a degree in accounting. Eventually her income surpassed his. Her ambitions engorged. His stayed small enough.

         Dad said that day, when I was 17 and being an asshole: "Someday, Tom, you'll open your big mouth ... and someone else will close it for you. With their fist."

         Of course, that was him. That was how dad got one uncle to stop beating his wife: with fists. The family knew and appreciated. For my dad, it was always fists. He was a star athlete/local politician. Fists were reasonable.

         Dad was right, though. That day came for me, too.

 

 

 

Chapter 46 (again, again, again...)

 

Scanlon sat in his cell. Same question in his head as Burke's: How would Father Pearse find him here?

         Because if he did find Jimmy here, the game was over.

         Jimmy shifted. The cell wasn't comfortable. He was nothing more than meat now. Stored meat. His Lord Almighty's instructions were simple: thou shalt not! Which — since the IRA's murderous, mucked-up hijacking — reduced Jimmy to nothing more than sin in a tin.

         Jimmy's soul: failed forever. Gone for good. Hell, for eternity. Without end, amen. Now what? You want me to pound my head against these filthy bars? Beat the brains of a still-breathing creature named Jimmy Scanlon breathless maybe? As if I could: as if I could take the coward's way out.

         Jimmy thought a lot about the coward's way out.

         Sin in a tin; so give me a can opener. Blessed relief. Maybe sleep since I can't at all. No. Sleep wouldn't happen. Jimmy hadn't earned anything like sleep. Not even close: one more time: one more time every few seconds, every minute, endless. Once more Jimmy shoved himself down his custom-made thorn-lined torture-chamber unforgiving hole: he'd killed his own.

         The argument that didn't quit....

         New troops trusted him: he was Sergeant Jimmy Scanlon. Troops trusted sergeants more than officers. Way of things. Officers were puffed-up, know-little, know-it-all, rushed-to-the-front, obey-orders-and-quickly-die college boys.

         Smart new troops trusted sergeants instead.

         They'd heard: good sergeants looked out for their troops.

         Meaning: most troops trusted Sergeant Scanlon without a second thought, because he wore the right stripes.

         Now, though, some who'd trusted Jimmy Scanlon had died. Murdered by him. Murdered by politicians he'd never met, didn't know, didn't care about. Figments.

         Murdered by me, in other words.

         Jimmy slid deeper down his thorn-lined hole: his cell. Dug it himself. Furnished it himself.

         His hole; he owned it. His because he'd murdered his own trusting troops: no other words forgave that. Jimmy had failed trusting men. Failed a willing-to-forgive-but-not-quite-forgive-everything God. Failed his Christian, Roman Catholic faith, too; those hard-, early-planted values: teachings, expectations.

         Jimmy saw/knew he'd failed anyone he could think of. Known/saw in this comfortless cell how many there were: the dozens of troopers, he'd counted originally; then the hundreds. Not one among them, he accepted, willing to accept Jimmy's remorse.

         Worst: he'd failed himself. Forever.

         Forever. New feeling.

         Forever was a very long time. Jimmy saw that now.

         He was young; he'd nested in his youth until now. He was capable; he'd nested in that, too; until now. Then he'd betrayed his own. Willingly. Because he was seduced. By a priest; by more than one; by serpents' tongues that were convincing. By a cause that seemed so plainly righteous.

         Only if you saw an occasional murder as righteous.

         Forever. Forever. Forever.

         Jimmy's unforgiving alarm would not stop ringing.

        ------

        He needed his soul back. It didn't have to be his full soul, either. Not a soul with wings, singing Latin. Really, any small replica soul would do; anything that would let him sleep again, just a few hours.

         So Scanlon sat in his cell, sticking to his tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he whispered to himself. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain Sunday, at a certain time."

         That was his core story.

         That was his tune: the one tune left to sing; if ever he saw those IRA pricks again. Best he could do to their faces. If he ever got the chance: he practiced, he practiced, he practiced,

         This explosive material was far, far more powerful than the shite you've been using. Turn you into gods. [Small problem: Scanlon kept seeing leprechauns, not real gods. Move on please, Jimmy. Move on NOW.] A stable explosive, too. Like modeling clay. Safe enough for children. I know you IRA fellas have good imaginations.

        ------

        Traitor and murderer Jimmy Scanlon would/could try to sell one more easy hijacking.

         Just one more. Due to his ancient orphan's lingering last-gasp loyalty to the man who raised him right, Father Mike, who thinks you IRA shits walk on water. 'Course he's never seen your real work like I have. After that, fuck-ups? Jimmy imagined saying Then I head off to fight the Huns. Do something worth doing. a real enemy. Good riddance to you all: your little island and your little fights. Father Mike was wrong about you. But I owe him one more college try.

        Those IRA fellas Jimmy spoke to in his head for sleepless hours did, as it turned out, possess sufficient imagination.

         He'd heard from Father Pearse finally: they were interested.

         Due credit to the lot of them, Jimmy supposed. Burke, too. Burke had passed it along: they were interested.

         They held up their end of the Irish penchant for spinning wild and tall tales: by robbing banks, trading arms, agitating North and South, digging in. Ireland had revolted more than once. And every dismal, cruelly-dealt-with failure had hardened the next bunch to come along.

         Now they're finally hard enough, in this hen-scratched backyard of every English monarch since 1171. Jimmy. Burke. Talking a bit. A slave yard, too, for almost 800 years. Farmland owned by someone else. Those poor souls born here didn't matter. They did the husbandry and the growing and died unremarked, for some English aristocrat they'd never caught sight of.

         The IRA was interested.

         They wanted to blow things up.

         No wonder. Burke easily understood the basic matter: mind, heart, an unambiguous military map, enemies, injustice.

         Until.

         Until you crossed my boundary.

         Until you killed my G.I.s, the ones under my personal protection, far from their families and friends, gone cold in this wet and foreign soil, on the wrong end of someone else's politics.

         Killing G.I.s? Those deaths, dear IRA, are now my chief business. Full time. From this point on. Until one of us dies. It won't be me.

 

 

[writing is rewriting]

 

Chapter 44

Father Pearse sat through Scanlon's pitch.

         The priest then answered: kindly; with centuries of duplicity at his fingertips, duplicity needed to stay safe in an uncertain world: "Of course I'll let you know, Jimmy."

         The priest paused solemnly.

         Jimmy: "I'll come back in a few days."

         "I'll let you know, Jimmy."

         "How will you let me know?"

         "I'll find you. Plenty of ways. Quick as I can, Jimmy." Firm eye contact this time; the priest leaned in. Made the sale with God's own eyes.

         Father Pearse said: "Slán." Goodbye in Irish; slawn to Yank ears.

Meaning at this point nothing. Yeah: Goodbye. Get the fuck from my sight, as if you never existed. That special Slán. That Jimmy-just-became-a-problem-in-Belfast Slán.

         The same aged and ageless housekeeper who'd soothed Sergeant Scanlon before at the vestry door now led him out again.

         She murmured it, too: Slán. With a cleaning cloth wrapped around her right hand. Slán. There was a cleaning cloth wrapped around her dry, transparent right hand first time, too, Jimmy recalled. A uniform she wore. So she'd signaled Jimmy meekly first time, for all eternity: Slán; her standard sentiment, as she wiped Father's spots away.

         Wiped meekly. All she could do.

         Then Jimmy was out. On the street. Which was a different place. Beyond polished mahogany.

         Prey. Pray. Not much difference.

 

Chapter 45

In another part of Belfast, secure, behind brick walls topped by oiled rolls of new barbed wire, Major Burke had one other small worry about the mousetrap he was building: Do they even do Sunday drives in Northern Ireland, given all the rationing? Maybe that was one detail too cute? It didn't have to be on Sunday!

         The real question was: Would his creaky mousetrap work? Another couple of questions: Was Jimmy Scanlon already a dead man and did Burke care? The quick answer was no, not at all. Scanlon was a traitor: killed his own troops.

         That was the quick answer. It wasn't the full answer.

         And then there was this: How the fuck would Father Pearse contact Jimmy, if the IRA's answer was yes? Jimmy was in a cell, held as incognito as the U.S. Army could devise.

         "I'll find you," the priest had promised. "Plenty of ways."

         But there were no ways Burke could figure. A priest conspiring with the IRA was resourceful, sure; he wasn't supernatural. In fact, just the opposite: if the priest couldn't find Jimmy, what would that say? So maybe Burke had built himself a mousetrap with no hope of mice.

         Burke dropped his big, confident, groomed-for-Claire-much-as-anyone head into his correspondingly big hands, behind secure brick walls and barbed wire; thought: Now what?

         He offered a prayer. And please make it simple.

 

Chapter 46

Scanlon sat in his cell. Same question in his head as Burke's: How would Father Pearse find him here?

         Because if he did find Jimmy here, the game was over.

Jimmy shifted. The cell wasn't comfortable.

         He was nothing more than meat now. He was stored. His Lord Almighty's instructions were perfectly clear, too: thou shalt not! Which reduced Jimmy, since the IRA's fuck-up, to nothing more than sin in a tin. Failure. He was a failure. He had failed forever. For good. For eternity. Without end, amen.

         Now what? Pound his head against filthy bars? Beat the still-breathing creature named Jimmy Scanlon breathless maybe, if he could: if he could take the coward's way out?

         Jimmy thought about that a lot.

         It wouldn't happen. He hadn't earned that blessed relief. Jimmy had killed his own. G.I.s had trusted him: this figure, Sergeant Jimmy Scanlon. They'd trusted him more than they'd trusted officers, nothing more than college boys. That's what sergeants were for: trust.

         Yet some who'd trusted him without a second thought, because of his stripes: they were dead now. Murdered by him. Murdered by politicians he'd never even met, didn't know them, didn't care about them. Murdered by me, in other words.

         There were no other words. He'd failed his trusting men. Failed his willing God; his Christian, Roman Catholic faith; those values, those teachings, those expectations.

         Had failed anyone Jimmy could think of. And he'd thought hard.

         Worst: failed himself. For a very long time.

         Forever was a very long time. He saw that now. He was young; he'd nested in his youth. He was capable; he'd nested in that, too. Then he'd betrayed his own. Willingly.

         Forever. Forever. Forever.

         His unforgiving alarm would not stop ringing.

         Jimmy needed his soul back. It didn't have to be his full soul. Not a soul with wings, singing Latin. Really, any small replica soul would do; anything that would let him sleep again, just a few hours.

 

 

Chapter 47

 

Nothing then? Burke planned

Jimmy couldn't help himself. Jimmy, the real Jimmy, the breathing Jimmy, the Jimmy so far, was dead, dead as history. Nothing else. Burke planned a bit more

Burke, best case, did not expect ex-Sergeant Jimmy Scanlon to survive very long after the ambush. A flea flattened fast between two thick, uncaring fingers: the U.S. Army and the IRA.

Burke

Easy pickings, Burke assumed. Sorry to think that. All he had.

A regretful prayer. To a disappointed man: Jimmy.

         Driving one car. On this very wrong day.

         Doing that.

         Coming up dead. To be expected.

         There would be a lead car and a tail; both plainclothes.

         The IRA would expect that. The front car would be in sight. The behind car would hang a minute back. The usual convoy.

Chapter 46 [again]

 

Scanlon sat in his cell.

         He knew he was meat.

         Pound his head against bars? Beat himself bloody on the back brick wall, trying to take the coward's way out? Didn't matter now.

         He knew well as knowing you needed to piss: he'd fallen. He was just bad meat. Unsanctified meat. Soul chased out. Low meat. Gone meat. Done meat. The thing Father Mike had warned against: "Never be just meat, Jimmy." Scanlon could only see himself that way now. Might as well have arrived sealed in a can. He had no control. He had no more will. He had nothing except a beating heart keeping the whole worthless apparatus alive. His brain counted for nothing he could see.

         He needed his soul back.

         Even a small replica of same.

So Scanlon sat in his cell, sticking to his tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he whispered to himself. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain day, at a certain time."

         That was his story. His tune. His tune was all he had left. If he ever saw those IRA pricks again.

         That was the best he could do.

         Traitor and murderer Jimmy Scanlon could try to sell one more easy hijacking. One more, seemingly from a lingering last-gasp loyalty to Father Mike, who thinks you IRA people walk on water. 'Course he's never seen your real work like I have. After that, fuck-ups? Then I head off to fight the Huns. Do something worth doing. Good riddance to you all: your little island and your little fights.

What he'd say to the IRA was just enough, Jimmy planned:

This explosive material was far, far more powerful.

         Like you were gods. (Small problem: Scanlon kept seeing leprechauns, not real gods. Move on please, Jimmy. Move on NOW.)

         Stable explosive, too. Pliable, like child's modeling clay.

        Safe enough for tiny fingers. Idiots could mold it easily to anything their minds could imagine.

And I know you IRA fellas have good imaginations.

They did.

         They held up their end of the Irish penchant for spinning wild and tall tales: by robbing banks, trading arms, agitating North and South, digging in. Ireland had revolted more than once. And every dismal, cruelly-dealt-with failure had hardened the next bunch to come along.

         Due credit to the lot of them, Jimmy supposed. Burke, too.

         Now they're finally hard enough to add a permanent lick of poison, don't-touch-me stone to this sea-girt soil, hen-scratched backyard of every English monarch since 1171. A slave yard, too, for almost 800 years. Just farmland to be owned and markets to exploit. The people really didn't matter, poor souls.

No wonder, Burke admitted: the IRA.

         He understood the matter: mind, heart, and map. Until.

         Until you crossed a boundary.

         Until you killed my G.I.s, the ones under my personal protection so far from their families and loved ones. Burke took that personally. Yes, he would.

         He would slide on Canada and the Brits. He liked those troops for enough good reason. But they were not his business here.

         Killing G.I.s? Beyond, as he'd said, the pale.

And that, my IRA friends, was completely his business. full time.

Nothing then? (Jimmy couldn't help himself. Jimmy was dead. Nothing else.)

 

Chapter 30

-- "The hijacking was stopped," said Major Burke. He sounded weary; not especially victorious. For good reason: "Four dead." Sold out by informers. "One other thing," the RUC man said. "You know, Major, this is eye for an eye now." He looked Burke's way. "For you." Paused, went quiet. "Nothing you don't already know, yes?" "I know. Yes." "Not the little lads and lassies, either. You lose people to these mutts, you find their biggest man. Chop his cock off. Mail it home to mother." Burke remembered Claire saying something about "mother." I'll be mother, she'd said, pouring tea in the shop. Burke chose a safe reply. "We'll have our justice. One day." "Justice?" the RUC man started. His fist banged the rattling table. He was having none of it. "Who's talking fuckin' justice? I'm talking fuckin' prevention." He stared. "These people take an inch? You give them back a mile. Up their arse. With your boot. "This isn't pinafores and puppies, Major America. You kill them. And then you kill them again, just to make sure they're conclusively dead. Yanks have to learn that, I'm telling you. No shit. You are going to leave a massive turd behind you if you don't." The RUC man paused. A smile crept back. "If you have trouble with the killing, we stand ready to help. Because we're going to have sweep up after you, any way it turns."

Apprehension danced its chilly fingertips across Jimmy's heart. "Who?" he asked. "The locals, kid."

Scudder was a lifer; in Jimmy's eyes, a dinosaur. But he probably had most of it right.

"The locals are shooting at us, m'lad. Happened this morning, at a town on the Derry road. A truck hi-jacking. They almost got away with it, too." All the fire, the small fire he'd nourished for a unified Ireland, went out. Utterly. Suddenly. For good. Reversed. Untrue. A lie. Replaced by his sense of complicity in an evil. Clear to anyone with half a brain. Those chilly fingertips he'd felt on his heart? They were all that was left. He'd broken something that couldn't be fixed. Inside. As long as he lived he knew it would remain busted, too. An accusation he couldn't talk himself out of. He had killed some-body. More than one. His own kind, too; other soldiers.

It's called writing. Actually, it's RE-writing. Chapter 76, the opening, AGAIN

 

Chapter 46

Scanlon sat in his cell.

         He knew he was meat.

         Pound his head against bars, beat himself bloody on the back brick wall, try to take the coward's way out? Didn't matter now.

         He knew well as knowing you needed to piss: he'd fallen. He was just bad meat. Unsanctified meat. Soul chased out. Low meat. Gone meat. Done meat. The thing Father had warned against: "Never be just meat, Jimmy." Scanlon could only see himself that way now. Might as well have arrived sealed in a can. He had no control. He had no more will. He had nothing except a beating heart keeping the whole worthless apparatus alive. His brain counted for nothing he could see.

         He needed his soul back.

         Even a small replica of same.

 

So Scanlon sat in his cell, sticking to his tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he whispered to himself. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain day, at a certain time."

         That was his story. His tune.

         Said it over and over until he could sing it to the IRA, if he ever saw those pricks again. That was the best he could do. Jimmy Scanlon could try to sell one more easy hijacking. One more, out of a lingering last-gasp loyalty to Father Mike, who thinks you people walk on water. 'Course he's never seen your real work. After that, fuck-ups? Then I head off to fight the Huns. Good riddance to you all: your little island and your little fights.

 

Chapter 46

 

Scanlon languished in his cell.

            He knew knew knew he was just meat.

            Pound his head against the bars, the back wall. He Scanlon shit was poisoned meat. Unsancitified meat. Meat not a soul. Meat that would go nowhere.

            Meat that would die, spoil, right here, in a basement with drips and routines and bricks. Where no one really cared, duty being duty. Meat that would spoil not just in this cell. But forever. Gone. Done.

            He saw himself that way.

            Jimmy Scanlon might as well have arrived sealed in a can. He had no control. So he stuck to his fruit-fly tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he hummed. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain day, at a certain time."

            That was his story.

            About the IRA? Best he could do.

            Just before the typical count-on-them Brits doubted him and put a bullet through his brain; as an economy measure. Because bullets cost money. And government Brits weren't trusting. Government Brits weren't patient. Cunning is all. And if he wasn't cunning, he was dead; Scanlon knew.

         That was his last pillow. Cunning or dead.

Chapter 46

 

Scanlon languished in his cell.

            He knew knew knew he was just meat.

            Pound his head against the bars, the back wall.

            Scanlon shit was poisoned meat. Unsancitified meat. Meat not a soul. Meat that would go nowhere.

            Meat that would die, spoil, right here, in a basement with drips and routines and bricks. Where no one really cared, duty being duty. Meat that would spoil not just in this cell. But forever. Gone. Done.

            He saw himself that way.

            Jimmy Scanlon might as well have arrived sealed in a can. He had no control. So he stuck to his fruit-fly tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he hummed. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain day, at a certain time."

            That was his story.

            About the IRA? Best he could do.

            Just before the typical count-on-them Brits doubted him and put a bullet through his brain; as an economy measure. Because bullets cost money. And government Brits weren't trusting. Government Brits weren't patient. Cunning is all. And if he wasn't cunning, he was dead; Scanlon knew.

         That was his last pillow. Cunning or dead.

Chapter 44: The opening

 

 

Father Pearse sat through Scanlon's pitch. Then the priest answered; kindly, with swelling compassion for deaths on both sides; with com-pletely sincere truth, yet necessary centuries of duplicity: "I'll let you know of course, Jimmy." The priest paused solemnly. This was big. "Quick as I can, Jimmy." Firm eye contact. "Slán." Goodbye in Irish; slawn to Yank ears.

Meaning at this point, yeah: Goodbye; and get the fuck from my sight, as if you never existed.
That special Slán. That Jimmy-just-became-a-problem-in-Belfast Slán. The same ageless housekeeper who'd soothed Sergeant Scanlon at the vestry door before and out again; she'd murmured it, too: Slán. Had a cleaning cloth wrapped around her right hand. Slán. A cleaning cloth wrapped around her dry, transparent right hand last time, too; Jimmy re-called. Like a uniform she wore.
Slán, she told Jimmy meekly as he left. Her standard sentiment. Wiping spots away meekly. All she could do. Then he was on the street.

In another part of Belfast, secure, behind gleaming untested rolls of barbed wire, Major Burke had a new worry about his mousetrap: Do they even do Sunday drives in Northern Ireland, given all the rationing? Would this work? Was Jimmy already a dead man? And did Burke care about that part of the plan? The quick answer was no; not at all. That was the quick answer.