Кен Бруен - The Ghosts of Galway

“What’s Aleppo?”

At home, a respected [ sic ] father of three children murdered them and his wife

With

A hammer

And

His hands.

Then the piece of shit left a letter arranging how the Guards were to be contacted.

Think that’s bad?

Many papers eulogized him as a

Great

Teacher,

Father,

Community organizer,

Sportsman,

And a guard of honor lined up as his coffin was brought in to the church.

Words fail me.

Mayo and Dublin were in the All-Ireland hurling final. Mayo hoped to finally lay its curse to rest.

What curse?

In 1951, Mayo won the All-Ireland and, returning home to the West in a victorious coach, they did not stop to allow a funeral to pass. The priest (them being the still glory days for the clergy) cursed them, uttering,

“Ye will never win another All-Ireland.”

Only in Ireland.

Nor had they won since.

As I approached my apartment, I wondered what fresh hell awaited me there. Of course my heart sank each time I realized the pup would not be greeting me with his wild and fierce welcome. I swallowed hard as I forced that image from my mind. I opened the door carefully and very slowly, of all the sights I could have envisaged, I never would have hit on what I now saw.

A dragon.

A green carving in balsam wood.

How do I know balsam? It said so on the dragon’s tail. It was about three feet in height and two in length. Truth to tell, it was a stunning piece of work. More impressive, a nigh perfect depiction of a girl on the creature’s back. Beside it was a green envelope. I opened it to find many pages of a letter.

Began thus:

Mon amour Jacques

Mea culpa for resorting to the ancient art of missive communication. Social media is so

2015 . As you read, you will notice many accents and as you can be dense I will alert you as they pop up. Currently, I am utilizing a BBC quite posh one so do feel suitably inferior.

That is, after all, the point of accents. If you doubt this, listen to Boris Johnson.

Too, you will see rather than hear laughter, as in,

Ha ha .

Personally, I never found laughter in written form as the slightest bit amusing. There are many cinema references buried in the letter for your entertainment plus, of course, literary allusion. The main thrust of this missive is to GET YOUR FUCKING ATTENTION.

I, as they say, fired the first salvo and you seem oddly reluctant to engage.

But you will.

I feel your focus waning even as you read so here is a shot of adrenaline.

Will I kill the nun?

Ha ha .

I put the letter down, rage and disbelief fighting for ascendancy. I moved over to the cupboard, took out the Jay, and fast hammered a double shot. Felt it hit like worry and then

The artificial calm. Breathe in and out, then resumed the letter of insanity.

“Did you have to go and grab a drink, Jack-o?”

It was eerie and downright spooky how she could predict my responses.

I read on.

Search la femme and I will admit, the nun, Maeve? She was the very soul of hospitality but, truly, a silly bitch. She bought every line of bullshit I trotted out. I nearly offed her there and then and, get this, you’ll laugh (if not yer actual ha ha ), she gave me a rosary. You think it would be ironically religious if I strangled her with them there beads (South Carolina accent here; pay attention!)?

Would killing a nun merit a special fire in hell and, make no mistake, mister, you and me are hell-bent. I love you Jack, moi coeur, but you have become a distraction and, let’s be honest, a tiny bit boring and, while we’re deep sharing here, fellah, what is the fucking deal with the dogs? I mean seriously? To lose one, okay, no harm, no foul, and tragic and all that good shite, but two, c’mon, what’s that about?

Deep sigh here my alky friend, can you hear it, like a cry dredged up from the pit of an emerald soul. I gotta fly so get your fucking act together and do something . Don’t be a whiny arse all your wasted life. One last memo afore I go. You look at the green dragon and listen up! It’s Emerald you stupid bollix.

Yours in infamy,

Em.

Xxxxxxxxxx

P.S. Did you get the lit references to

Joyce,

Kafka,

Rilke,

South Park ?

Sister Maeve had been in my life for over a decade. And, oddly enough, we hadn’t become enemies. She had once enlisted my help in Church matters and per usual I muddled through, not doing a whole lot but not really causing a whole lot of damage, either. She was the outreach for the Poor Clares and if she were the face of a new church, it might yet survive. She had a sweet tooth and loved few things more than Black Forest gâteau. I liked her a lot.

En route to warn her about Emily, I stopped at Griffin’s Bakery, which specialized in a wonderful bread called the grinder. Sounds like a euphemism for Trump, who had been mercilessly skewed by the brilliant Alec Baldwin on SNL . A line had already formed for grinders.

Such was their word-of-mouth fame.

I thought about the perfect pint:

Hold the glass at 45-degree angle

      Pour slowly

To halfway

Stop

Go for a smoke

Return and fill

Let sit

For the head to form

Voilà!

The papers screamed not of

Aleppo,

Or

Trump,

Or even

The looming Guards strike.

No.

Kim flaming Kardashian .

You believe it?

Robbed, bound and gagged, in her exclusive Paris apartment.

Of ten million in jewels.

Her bodyguard was away in a nightclub. Whatever else you thought about clan Kardashian and, God knows, one tried to think nothing at all, you had to admit to Kim’s ability to make money. Okay, so she made it by showing every bit of her bod in every possible way but, fuck, last year she made sixty-five million.

Yeah, read that and freaking weep.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at who he gave it to. Young girls didn’t want to be Hillary Clinton (God forbid) or Katie Hopkins; they wanted the Twitter/Instagram fame of a vacuous Kardashian.

Woe is indeed fucking us.

Big time.

And I was going to visit a nun.

From

  A

   Kardashian

    To

     A

      Nun.

From

  A

   Jack

    To

     A

      King.

Big hit when I was a kid.

Like a bad title for a bad Lifetime Channel movie.

I walked the William Joyce route.

Infamous during the Second World War as the voice of Nazi propaganda.

Known as Lord Haw-Haw .

The night before the British hanged him, he wrote,

My Dear Margaret

I am anxious that you should

Go to Galway and see the docks ,

Long Walk ,

O’Brien’s Bridge ,

Nile Lodge ,

Taylor’s Hill ,

Lenaboy Castle on the Corrib ,

But, above all ,

The stretch from Salthill to Blackrock

The promenade where we used to live behind .

As I reached Sister Maeve’s small house I didn’t realize that over the years I had

Dangerously

Recklessly

Missed the point.

But now

I had missed the play.

Mystery writers like to utilize misdirection. I had not only