Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“Count me out. I certainly do not fancy an autumnal ferry ride across the choppy water to Nantucket. But certainly next month, my dear, we will have to go to Salem,” Gerry says.

“What’s in Salem?” I ask innocently.

“It’s where they live on Days of Our Lives,” Jackie contributes. “Everything happens there.”

Gerry frowns at him and looks at me significantly as if to say “Can you believe he is seeing my daughter?”

“Think they mean Salem, the witch place,” I say.

Gerry shows his gleaming teeth, as disarming as Mack the Knife’s pearly whites.

“Salem has a wonderful Halloween parade. It’s very scary. Kit used to be afraid to go, didn’t you, Kit?” Gerry says, making a ghostly groan.

“I thought there were no witches; wasn’t the whole thing a huge mistake?” I ask.

Sonia nods at me in agreement.

“It’s in very poor taste. If you think about it, it’s the site of an awful massacre of innocents. It would be like holding a

jokey parade to remember Auschwitz. I, for one, certainly wouldn’t go there,” Sonia says, huffing at Gerry for pooh-poohing the Nantucket idea.

Gerry knows he has to make amends.

“The cabin then. It’s lovely this time of year.”

“Everything is nice about it, except the name,” Sonia replies, not completely won over.

“How many times do I have to tell you? It wasn’t my doing. That’s the real name of the actual place,” Gerry says defensively and looks at me with an impish grin.

“Oh, the fucking suspense,” I almost say sarcastically but instead: “What is the name?”

“The Dead Yard,” Gerry announces with fiendish satisfaction.

“Unusual,” I add, playing along.

“It used to be railway land. On the old Maine-Boston Atlantic line. And at certain points along the tracks they needed a clearing to put damaged or unused rail cars, so they’d just fell a big chunk of forest and leave the cars there in what they called a ‘dead yard.’ Of course, the train tracks are long gone now. Sad. Passenger trains don’t go to Maine at all now. You might have noticed the old ruined rail bridge over the Merri-mack in downtown Newburyport.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I say quickly before Gerry can trot out sic transit gloria mundi. “But I have to agree with you, Mr. McCaghan, that it’s a real shame to see railways disappearing.”

Touched grunts, and I’m expecting an atypical contradiction of Gerry but instead he says: “If you knew your Civil War history, Sean, you’d know that the Dead Yard was also a nickname for an infamous Southern prison.”

Gerry nods knowledgeably, but mercifully, before Touched can launch into a description of the horrors of Andersonville, the maid comes in to clear the table.

Touched checks his watch and gives Gerry a look.

Gerry stands, pats his ample belly.

“Well, folks, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wee bit of business to attend to, tempus fugit. I have to travel up to Portsmouth.”

He gives Sonia a kiss and goes upstairs.

“I’ll take a shower,” Jackie says.

“Jackie, upstairs, Gerry’s den, ten minutes, ok?” Touched says.

Jackie nods and excuses himself from the table.

Touched looks at Kit.

“Kit, you’re going to help your dad today? Is that right?” he says in a slightly clandestine tone. Whether he’s unwilling to openly discuss things in front of me or the maid I’m not sure, but he’s certainly holding back something.

“What are you saying, Touched? I should hurry up?”

“Love, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do, but you don’t want to keep your da waiting, do ya?”

Kit says nothing, walks slowly from the table and when she’s round the corner, bolts up the stairs. Sonia goes into the kitchen and Touched looks at me with a conspiratorial smile.

“Listen, Sean, you came about the right time. Now you’re here we can do a few more things of an operational nature.We can progress a wee bit faster.”

“Why? Is there something on for today?”

“There is, as a matter of fact. Can’t discuss it here. Now go back to the guesthouse, shower, shave, brush your teeth, and join me and Seamus in Gerry’s den ASAP. Ok?”

“Ok.”

“And next time you come for breakfast, change out of your jammies, it’s bad fucking form, mate.”

The den was in a round tower constructed in a corner of the house facing the ocean. This was where Gerry kept his private papers and conducted his most secret meetings. This, apparently, was also where he kept his books. Expand Your Word Power, Teach Yourself French, Teach Yourself Irish, 100 Latin Aphorisms Everyone Should Know. Titles like these showed where Gerry’s florid language came from and also revealed perhaps why he was doing it. He was trying to impress his half Quebecois new bride. Gerry was about fifteen years older than her and from a different class, but he needn’t have bothered with any of this shite. I could tell that Sonia loved him and no matter what happened she wasn’t going to be the weak link. Her attraction to Gerry was not physical nor intellectual, but rather, romantic. Gerry was a poet of violence, a crusader for his oppressed people, a bane for the wicked oppressor. Though if she was into Byronic freedom fighters surely my dodgy foot made me a better match.

The maid had brought up a pot of tea and chocolate biscuits and then discreetly disappeared down the stairs. In Gerry’s home there seemed to be two maids and a cook, all Mexican, all quiet and unobtrusive. Exactly the type that might prove very fruitful and productive if it ever came down to prosecutions. Servants always know a hell of a lot more than people give them credit for and they’d either be loyal right to the bitter end or have a host of resentments that they’d like to pay back in kind, possibly in a court of law.

Touched noticed that I was looking at a little green toolbox on Gerry’s desk.

“Is that your screwdriver set?” I asked.

Touched grinned as if I’d just made a faux pas.

“Something like that,” he said, took the toolkit, and stuck it in a drawer.

He rummaged in the same drawer and found a couple of Gerry’s cigars wrapped in silver tubes.

“Havana Churchills, very good,” he said and offered us a smoke.

Each of us declined, so he lit one only for himself. Seamus, myself, Jackie relaxing in leather chairs while Touched puffed his cigar and explained the op.

As usual with this talky crew, he outlined his grander theory first. Real chatty bastards, the lot of them. Touched blew out a smoke ring and began his spiel:

“I suppose you all want to know where Gerry and me plan to go now we’ve had a bit of a setback. Well, while you lads have been relaxing, we’ve been out doing work. As you may have realized, the IRA cease-fire has sowed chaos not just for us but for the Ra, too, and its partnership organizations. Been a bad few weeks. Very bad. But the silver lining is that things are starting to turn round now. I’ve made a few contacts with a group calling itself Real IRA, which is based in Dundalk under the command of a good friend of ours, Ruari O’Lughdagh. And I’ve also had feelers from a group called Continuity IRA, which I don’t know too much about, but I’ll make it a priority to find out. We’re not necessarily looking for an umbrella group but it would certainly help us out, especially in these times. Now to impress those boys, we’ll have to get cracking, we’ll have to do some jobs. Don’t worry, Sean, I see your eyes widening. Gerry and I have about thirty years experience between us and although you boys have none, if you’re willing to learn, we’re willing to teach ya.”

During this entire speech, Jackie had been giving me the evil eye. It annoyed me; I thought I’d already put that wee skitter in his place.