Lawrence Block - A Long Line of Dead Men

"I don't believe I know him."

"Why should you? He was killing men fifteen years before you were born."

"Are you serious?"

"We talked of West Cork," he said, "and Paddy Meehan's pub and its improvements. Eamonn Dougherty is from Skibbereen in West Cork. During the Troubles he was with Tom Barry's flying column." He sang: " 'Oh, but isn't it great to see / The Auxies and the RIC / The Black and Tans turn tail and flee / Away from Barry's coll-yum.' Do you know that song?"

"I don't even know what the words mean."

"The Auxies were the Auxiliaries, the RIC was the Royal Irish Constabulary, and you know who the Black and Tans were. Here's a song you'd understand without a glossary.

On the eighteenth day of November

Outside of the town of Macroom

The Tans in their great Crossley tender

Came hurryin' on to their doom

But the boys of the collyum were waiting

With rifle and powder and shot

And the Irish Republican Army

Made shit of the whole fuckin' lot.

"It was a bloody massacre, and trust the fucking Irish to write a song about it. Eamonn Dougherty was in the middle of it. Oh, he did his share of killing, that one. The British had a price on his head, and then the Free State government put a price on his head, and he came here. A relative got him a job unloading trucks in a warehouse, though you wouldn't think he had the size for it. Then he was a taxi dispatcher for many years, and he's long since retired. And drinks his two pints of beer a day, and says not a word, and God alone knows what goes on in his head."

"When you first started talking about him," I said, "I found myself thinking of another little old man. His name was Homer Champney."

"I don't know him."

"I never knew him myself," I said, "but he started something. Or continued something, it's hard to know for sure. It makes a hell of a story."

"Ah," he said. "Let's hear it."

And so I told the story of the club of thirty-one. I talked for a long time. When I was done Mick didn't say anything at first. He filled his glass and held it to the light.

"I remember Cunningham's," he said. "They served good beef and the bar would pour you a decent drink. When I think of all the places that are gone, all the people who are gone. I don't understand time. I don't understand it at all."

"No."

"Sand through an hourglass. You hold something- anything- for a moment in your hand. And then it's gone." He sighed. "When did they have their first meeting? Thirty years ago?"

"Thirty-two."

"I was twenty-five, and a loutish piece of work I was. They'd never have had me in their club, or any other decent association of men. But that's a club I'd have joined if asked."

"So would I."

"And never missed a meeting," he said. "Standing together. Bearing witness. Waiting for the man with the broad ax."

"The man with-?"

"Death," he said. "That's how I envision him. A man with his arms and shoulders bare, wearing a black hood and carrying a broad ax."

"Elaine would say you were put to death in a past life, and the man you just described was the executioner."

"And who's to say she's wrong?" He shook his big head. "Sand through an hourglass. Eamonn Dougherty, the fucking Scourge of Skibbereen, sitting on his barstool watching the years slip past him. He outlived the Galway Rose, the murderous little bastard. He'll outlive us all, with his wee cap and his two pints of beer." He drank. "A long line of dead men," he said.

"How's that?"

"Ah, it's a story. Do you know Barney O'Day? He used to come to Morrissey's."

"I never met him there," I said, "but I knew him when I was at the Sixth. He managed a bar on West Thirteenth Street. They had live music, and sometimes he'd get up and sing a song."

"Had he any sort of a voice?"

"I don't think he was any worse than the paid entertainment. I used to run into him at the Lion's Head, too. What about him?"

"Well, it's a story I heard another man tell at a wake," he said. "It seems Barney's old mother was in hospital, and he was at her bedside, and the dear told him that she was ready to die. I had a good life, says she, and wrung all the joy I could out of it, and I'm not after havin' machines keepin' me alive, an' tubes stickin' out of me. So give us a kiss, Barney me lad, says she, as you were always as foine a son as a mother could ask for, an' then tell the doctor to pull the plug an' let me go.

"So your man gives her a kiss and goes off to find the doctor, and tells him straight out what the old woman wants him to do. And the doctor's scarcely more than a boy himself. He hasn't been at it long, and Barney can see he's got no stomach for this sort of thing. He wants to be prolonging life, not cutting it short. He's troubled, and Barney's a gentle soul himself, for all the bluster he puts on, and wants to spare the man some agony.

" 'Doctor,' says he, 'put your mind at ease. It's not such a terrible thing you have to be doin'. Doctor, let me tell you somethin'. We O'Days come from a long line of dead people.' "

Outside, the wind blew up and drove rain against the windows. I looked out and saw cars passing, their lights reflected in the wet pavement. "That's a wonderful story," I said.

"Ever since it was told to me," he said, "I've carried the line around with me. For don't we all come from a long line of dead people?"

"Yes."

"Your tale of the club put me in mind of it. Thirty-one men, and one by one they go to their graves, and the last man left starts it all over again. A long line of dead men, stretching back through the centuries."

"All the way to Babylon, rumor has it."

"All the way to Adam," he said. "All the way to the first fish that grew hands and hauled himself ashore. Is some bastard killing these men of yours?"

"It looks that way."

"Can you tell who it is?"

"No," I said, "I can't. It's one of them or it's not, and either way it makes no sense that I can see. One of them gave me some money at the start, and I worked hard for it, but I don't know that I did anything useful. And now they've gone in together to give me more money, and I took it, but I don't know what the hell I'll do to earn it."

"You'll find him."

"I don't see how. I don't even know what to do next. I haven't got a clue."

"Just wait."

"Wait?"

"How many are left? Fourteen?"

"Fourteen."

"Bide your time," he said. "And when there's but one of them left, arrest him."

And, a little while later, he said, "They've a memorial in Washington, a wall with the names of all who died over there. You've seen it?"

"Only in photos."

"I thought, What the hell do I want to go there for? I know what it looks like. I know his name. I could print it out if I cared to, and hang it on a wall of my own. But something made me go. I can't explain it.

"I rode down on the train. I took a taxi from the station and told the driver I wanted to see the Vietnam Memorial. It wasn't far at all. It's just a wall, you know, with a simple shape to it. But you said you've seen photographs, so you know what it looks like.

"I looked at it and I started reading the names. 'A long line of dead men.' That was a long line of dead men. Thousands of names in no particular order, and only one name among them that meant a thing to me, so why was I reading the others? And how would I ever find his in the midst of them?

"I overheard someone telling someone else where to go to locate a name, and I stopped reading the names and went over to the directory and found out where his name was. I was afraid they might have left it off, but no, it was there, all right. And I found it on the wall. Just his name, Dennis Edward Ballou.

"I looked at that name," he said, "and my throat closed up, and I felt an awful fullness in the center of my chest, as if I'd taken a blow there. The letters of his name blurred in front of me, and I had to blink to clear my vision, and I thought I might weep. I haven't done that since I was a boy. I'd taught myself not to weep when my father hit me, and it was a lesson I learned too well. I'd have been glad of a few tears that day, but I'm long past them. They've dried up within me, they've gone and turned to dust.