Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

But, no, though the sight was bad enough. Max remembered high school guys bewailing the zits and pock marks of acne. He and Sean had escaped the curse, until the pub bombing. Sean’s freckled cheek had become a minefield of black bits of shrapnel and pale scarring, far less devastating than third-degree burns, but severe enough to make startled people politely look away.

“I say I got it in service.” Sean’s weary smile was symmetrical, a better sight for Max. “I don’t add it was in service to teenage stupidity.”

“Which I heard about in quintuplet when I got home.”

“Our parents, of course.” Sean frowned. “Who else?”

“Father Flynn.”

“I imagine your first confession after getting home would be giving the good father an opportunity to mete out a stiff amount of penance.”

“My first mortal sin,” Max agreed. “A month of daily rosaries. What about your arm?”

Max nodded at Sean’s left arm, held cocked in the sweater sleeve is if in an invisible sling. A sling of scar tissue. The left hand and fingers were untouched, looking artificial in their normality. A simple gold band on the third finger attested to Deirdre’s loyalty that had become love.

Sean filled him in. “Besides the beauty mark, no hearing on the left side. Permanent limp. Bum arm. I’m used to it, and to people adjusting to it. Otherwise, I function quite well here. Deirdre’s a wonder. Her own burns were of a lesser degree; at least I managed that. She’s the ‘front’ for our operation. I don’t often see the first-time guests, or rather, more importantly, they don’t see me except at a distance in the traditional visored cap, mucking the grounds and gardens. Some repeaters I socialize with.”

Max drank down a third of the beer. “That’s why you never came home, Sean? Never told anyone you were alive? You didn’t want them to share your pain?”

“Mike, it was over a year before I was even able to think straight. The IRA took me for one of their own. They’d wanted ‘innocents’ cleared out of the targeted pub, particularly American tourists.”

“Particularly American donors,” Max said bitterly.

“You knew their cause was just, Mike. That’s why we came north to see for ourselves.”

“We came north because we were punks. Teenage towers of bravado. We wanted to drink beer and score with girls. We wanted adventure, a last reckless summer before college and marriage and kids. And, yes, I believed the cause was right, but not the means, and I especially believed that after a pub bombing killed my best friend. Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me? Or the damn family?”

“After taking my bearings from that long year of skin grafts and rehab, I thought it best they remember me as I was. I wasn’t going to college, Mike. I wasn’t getting married, or didn’t think I was. And children? ’Twas against the church, but I’d not bring children into this intolerant, bomb-ridden world. And it’s even worse now.”

“’Twas,” Max repeated. “A bit of a brogue sounds good on you, Sean.”

“Are you going home and telling them about me, Mike?”

“Home? Telling them? I’ve been away almost as long as you.”

“What? Why the hell?” Max hated seeing Sean’s wonder expressed on his two-sided face. If he spent enough time with him, he knew the scars would fade in his consciousness and he’d see Sean as he was now without pain. As Deirdre saw him.

“Why didn’t you stay at home, Mike?”

“Look at it. Two cherished sons beg for a solo trip to the Auld Sod as a high school graduation present,” Max said. “Proud parents grant our wish to revisit the family roots. They give us tons of addresses in Ireland, but after a few obedient rounds, we hop up to Northern Ireland to see the ‘Troubles’ first-person. Only one son comes back, with a pile of presumed ashes to bury.”

Sean bent his head. “I’ve always imagined a fine funeral mass.”

“No doubt about the mass. But.” Max waited until Sean raised his head to look him in the eyes. “One son is gone. The other son is hale and healthy and had avoided the bombing by the skin of his teeth. Why?

“Do I tell them I was busy committing mortal sin with a pretty Irish colleen, an act that made me a man now? No, I wasn’t a man. I was the stupid young fool who chased a skirt to leave my cousin, my brother, to die in an IRA pub bombing.

“The dead boy’s parents can’t stand the sight of me. My own parents are deeply puzzled about why we weren’t together, not that they wished me your fate. All my tap dancing and evasions didn’t explain why I was the ‘miracle’ survivor and you were not. Why we inseparable friends would separate. I couldn’t even seek absolution in confession for that part of it. Father Flynn was a meddling old fellow, all for good reason, as he would judge it.”

Sean turned a bit more toward Max. “I heard later you’d come back. I know what you did. I found out after my year in hell. You went after the IRA agents who bombed the pub, IDed them and got them arrested and in jail.”

“I thought they were executed.” Max was relieved to learn he wasn’t a murderer by proxy.

“No. Sentenced to life, and that was overturned with the Peace. You still got an IRA price put on your head for that. I figured you’d head for Wisconsin and safety and forget about me. Now you’re telling me, after all that, you exiled yourself from home too?”

“Yup.” Max leaned forward to clink bottles. “We went off the reservation together, and, apart, we stayed lost and loose and following our own stubborn courses. We are indeed two of a kind.”

“Christ!” Sean’s good hand slammed the beer bottle down on the butcher-block countertop. “Deirdre wanted to blame you, but I wouldn’t let her. I stayed dead, stayed away, so that you could have a normal life with the family. And now you say you didn’t take it? Why the hell not?”

“Tracking those pub bombers, I discovered a knack for undercover work. My youth and vengeful self-hate and fury were assets. I was recruited as a counterterrorism agent. My mentor was a magician who taught me the trade as a perfect cover for going anywhere in the world. I couldn’t stand seeing the questions on the faces of our families, Sean. I stayed away out of cowardice.”

“Me, too, maybe,” he said with a weary laugh. “Aren’t we a pair? Send in the clowns.”

“Except, it’s so good to see you, talk with you again. Clear this crap out of the cupboards.”

“You pity me.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been a rolling stone. I had a girl and the sun was always shining, and then…my past caught up with me again. I had to go on the run. My mentor, the wisest man I’ve ever known, was shot dead during our last visit to Northern Ireland just weeks ago. And the lovely Kathleen has never forgotten or forgiven me for caring more about your so-called death than her life. After years of raising money for the IRA in the Americas even after the peace, she found out I performed in Las Vegas.”

“You performed in Las Vegas and the family never knew?”

“I used a deliberately corny performance name, ‘The Mystifying Max’.”

“Max? Where’d that come from?”

Max pursed his lips in a smile and waited.

“Oh, no! Not those awful middle and confirmation names.”

“Yup. Michael Aloysius Xavier.”

“And I’m Sean Owen Turlough. MAX, huh? Way better than SOT.”

Max started laughing. They’d get going on an absurdity as teens and laugh themselves silly. Some of that back and forth was coming back. “Owen Turlough , really? It sounds like Turdlough. Forgot about that. And who can pronounce Aloysius?”

“Al-low-ish-is. It has ‘Ish’ built in. ‘The mystifying Alo-ee-see-us’ does not have a ring to it, and you sound like a drunk when you say it.”