William Kienzle - Shadow of Death

“I am.” Patrick Joseph O’Flynn snapped to his feet and whipped off his cap, but did not release his grip on either pipe or shooper.

He could have been a clone of Barry Fitzgerald. The contrast between his five-foot-five and Koesler’s six-foot-three was pronounced.

“Please sit down, Mr. O’Flynn. I just came over to visit, if you don’t mind.”

“It’ll be Paddy to you, Father.”

Somehow, Koesler knew better than to invite O’Flynn to get reciprocal and call him Bob.

“Very well, Paddy.” Koesler sat down at O’Flynn’s table. Sitting did not prove much of a help. There was still a significant difference in size between the two men.

“Would ya be givin’ me the honor as well as the pleasure of buying yer Reverence a pint, perhaps?”

“Thank you.”

With a large smile, O’Flynn rapped the table a couple of times. Then, having gained Tom’s attention, he pointed to his glass and held up two fingers.

“Have you been here long, Paddy?”

O’Flynn consulted the clock. “Oh, I’d say since about noon.”

“No, I meant in Gurteen.”

“All my life.”

“You’re a native then.”

“I am.”

Koesler wondered again that no one had ever introduced the Irish to a simple yes or no.

“Then maybe you’d know how big the town is? How many inhabitants?”

“One hundred sixty-seven souls.”

“One hundred sixty-seven? That’s a pretty exact figure.”

“It is. People die; people are born. People marry. Some move away. It’s not all that much trouble to mind who’s doin’ what. The 167 souls would include five Protestant families, poor dears! They had a church for themselves, but sometime back in the fifties it fell into disuse. Now, it’s just a ruins out in the cemetery. An appropriate place for it, all things considered.” O’Flynn sucked in his breath sharply.

Tom delivered the Guinness and departed wordlessly.

“One hundred sixty-seven,” Koesler repeated, and thoughtfully sipped his Guinness. “That would make a pretty respectable clientele for this pub, I take it.”

“It would, but it’s not.”

“Not what?”

“The only pub.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s not! There are seven pubs in Gurteen.”

“Seven pubs in this little town?”

“Seven pubs. That would make it, in case yer doin’ yer arithmetic, 23.85 souls per pub.” O’Flynn paused a moment. “But it doesn’t work out that way.” He paused again. “This one’s the most popular. Because of the stage up there, more than likely. People like their music these days, ah, yes, they do.”

Koesler gestured toward the mute TV mounted high up on the wall. “Back in the States,” he said, “it’s hard to get people to go out at night for live entertainment. They all seem to want to stay home and watch the tube.”

“Ah, yes, Father. But then y’ve got all those channels, haven’t ya?”

“Well, yes, quite a few, especially with cable TV.”

“We’ve got two.”

“Just two?”

“On one of ’em,” O’Flynn glanced at the clock, “in just an hour and a half, they’ll be havin’ the Angelus.”

“No!”

“They will!”

“Well,” Koesler was impressed, “what do people do besides come to one of the pubs?”

“There’s the parish mission.”

“What?”

“The parish mission is goin’ on all this week. Mornin’ Mass at seven; evenin’ services at half seven.”

Koesler thought about that. “That’s interesting. I think I’ll go visit the cemetery for a while to get ready for the mission.”

“Ah, now wouldn’t that be right grand. Father.” O’Flynn, taking him quite seriously, added a Biblical quote: “‘tis a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.”

They spent a silent moment contemplating their glasses.

“But tell me, Father, if it’s not altogether too impertinent, what’s a fine, upstandin’ priest like yerself doin’ stayin’ in a pub? I assume,” he added in a conspiratorial tone, “that after yer cartin’ yer bag up the stairs and all, that ya are stayin’ here?”

“I’m a friend of Chris Murray’s; he invited me to stay here.”

“You know old Chris!” For the first time since Koesler had encountered this elfish man, O’Flynn removed his left hand from the shooper that held his Guinness. He rubbed both hands together. “A fine man, Chris! A fine man! Comes back regular. Oh, he’s made it in the States, he has. But still, his heart is here.”

“True,” Koesler agreed. “Besides, it’s not all that new an experience for me. I may not know what it’s like to live over an Irish pub, but I certainly know what it’s like living over an American bar.”

“Do ya, now?”

“Indeed. When I was a young lad we lived over a bar, the Tamiami, on the corner of West Vernor and Ferdinand in Detroit. I can remember trying to go to sleep every night with the juke box pounding away under my ear. That’s how I got to know all the words to all the popular music of the time. Like ‘Sentimental Journey’ and ‘Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy’ and ‘Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats’. . .” Koesler allowed the familiar titles to drift away. It was evident from his expression that O’Flynn’s musical appreciation stopped at the Irish harp and the tin whistle.

“But then, Father, if you’ll forgive my pryin’ a tad further, how did it happen that a fine young Catholic boy as you must have been; how did it happen that you were livin’ over an American pub. Was it during your troubles?”

“Troubles?”

“The Great Depression, I mean to say.”

Koesler chuckled. “No, it wasn’t the Depression. Our family owned a grocery store adjacent to the bar, in the same building, you see, and the two families—my parents and my mother’s sisters and their mother—lived in the two flats. One above the store, the other above the bar. Actually, my mother and her sisters owned the store, so it was called Boyle’s Market.”

Again, O’Flynn brightened, almost as much as he had at the mention of Chris Murray. “Boyle, ya say? Boyle! It couldn’t be that yer mother’s people were Boyles, could it now?”

“It could,” said Koesler, attempting a Gaelic-style response, “although originally I believe it was O’Boyle; they lost the ‘O’ somewhere along the way.”

“Boyle! Boyle! Boyle! I knew there was somethin’ I liked about you from the first I set eyes on ya, Father. Apart, that is, from yer bein’ a holy priest of God. And where is it yer folks would be comin’ from?”

“Right down the road, in Boyle.”

“They didn’t!”

“They did!”

“Well, then, Father, let me just tell ya a little bit about the village of Boyle and the Boyles who lived there.”

O’Flynn rapped on the table again until he attracted Tom’s attention. Again he pointed to the Guinness and held up two fingers.

He turned back to Koesler with a sprightly look. “Then, Father, after I tell ya all about Boyle, we can skedaddle over to St. Pat’s and catch the parish mission before tonight’s music at Teach Murray.”

“I don’t know about the parish mission, Paddy. That would sort of be a busman’s holiday. What’s on TV tonight?”

“Well, there’s always the Angelus at six.”

7.

What with one thing and another, an evening of dreary TV programming, together with cold and rainy weather, 7:30 found Father Koesler at St. Patrick’s Church for the parish mission.

Following Paddy O’Flynn’s advice, Koesler did not wear his clerical collar. “There’d be altogether too much adulation over it. Father. Sure, they’d be pullin’ ya up to the altar to preside. Best go as an ordinary human.”