Blood From A Shadow (2012) Read online

  He reached forward, I pulled the gun away, but he took my left hand in both of his, started stroking it, gently.

  “Con, that’s not the way it was, you know that deep down. Concentrate, think back to that day. You got in there first, before me, when I found you, you were the one holding the guy’s head up in the air and drinking his blood. Come on, see the picture in your head. You killed him. You had one of your fucking blackout shit scary episodes, Con. Remember?”

  Vomit piped up my throat, the room swayed around me, I dropped the gun and gripped the sides of the seat. This was bullshit. I was there, I saw him do it. Everybody knew it was him.

  “It’s ok, Con, I had your back, like always,” Ferdy said. “Nobody else knows, not even Florencita Conroy.”

  I pushed him over, ran to the bathroom, stuck my head under the cold tap. It wasn’t true, I knew what I had seen. He was playing with my head, just like Conroy had, she must have put him up to this. I gorged bile down the toilet, and just hung there, on my knees, waiting for the gyro to stop. I clamped my eyes shut, but the nightmare started to smoulder, readying to erupt, I slapped myself hard, four, five times. Ferdy was at my side.

  “Come back in, Con, you’ll be ok, that’s why I’m here, to look after you, the way I always have, remember?” he said.

  I let him lead me back to the seat, I felt my way on to it, my mind still blank, but a crushing vice was shrinking against my skull. Remember? I couldn’t remember, I knew what he had done, but I couldn’t afford to think about it now, had to focus on something else, couldn’t tailspin back into that hell. He held my hand and rubbed my back. The Kimber was on the floor, the other 45 was back in the bathroom.

  “You never got the help you needed after we were kidnapped, Con,” he said. “When this is all over, I’ll see to it that you get whatever you need, I promise, you will be fine again, we’ll all be there for you.”

  I caught enough breath to speak.

  “I know what happened, Ferdy. You did that stuff, I was there. Conroy tried to mess with my head afterwards, but I saw it, I know it was you,” I said.

  He folded his arms around me, my head rested on his chest, I held on to him.

  “It was one of your episodes, Con. It was never as bad as that before, but remember the old guy that told us about the Spanish Civil War? Remember what happened to him?” he said.

  Sure, Gallogly hit him with a brick, I remembered.

  “That prick Gallogly burnt his cat, Con, remember?” Ferdy said. “Then the old guy blamed us two, started yelling at us as if we did it. You lifted a brick and went for him, I had to pull you off him or his head would have been mush. That was the first time really, that’s when we knew. The stuff before, like you kicking those two little Italian kids up the street, everybody just laughed at all that, thought it was fun, but we all saw that old guy afterwards, it was more than fun.”

  I saw the disappointment in the old man’s eyes, remembered watching his pathetic funeral from a safe distance a couple of months later. Two or three other old men with their little Lincoln Brigade berets. We laughed and called them “Commie Bastards”. That’s what really happened.

  Rose had a bottle of gin stashed in the kitchen, Ferdy went straight to the spot and pulled us two glasses and ice. I emptied the glass and refilled to the brim.

  “What about that Polish kid in Coyne Park that night?” I said. “Who shot him? It was Gallogly, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess Gallogly shot him in the knee,” Ferdy said. “But when he was lying screaming on the ground you went over and jumped all over his leg. You stuck your fingers through the bullet hole, right through to the exit wound. The guy passed out with the pain, but me and Gallogly had to drag you off him, you weren’t going to stop until you rammed your whole fist right through his knee.”

  He told me other stuff, stuff from our childhood that nobody else could know, stuff I had forgotten. But it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true if it wasn’t in my head. He was telling me to “get real”, but I remembered what he had done, I saw and heard the pain he created, that was all real, and it didn’t stop being real just because Ferdy and Conroy and all the rest of them knew how to fuck with my head.

  “This shit you’re telling me”, I said, “did Rose or young Con ever see me like that?”

  He tightened his grip around me, stroked my head.

  “They love you, Con. We all do, that’s why we have to get you out of here. Trust me, it will work out fine in the end, everything will be just fine,” he said.

  I cried freely on his shoulder, it didn’t matter what had been real in the past, because it was only the past, all just shadows and dreams now, none of it real anymore, neither his story nor mine. Only my tears were real, until they were spent, and what would happen next, that was real. The rest was all just shit.

  “What about the poitin maker? The old guy with the horses in Armagh. Did I do that too?” I said.

  I felt the recoil shoot through his body. He held his breath, stopped stroking my head, edged away from me.

  “You heard about that, huh?” Ferdy said. “I suppose Artie was mouthing off again. Yeah, everybody thinks I mutilated him, but I just had to live with that, I had to let them believe it. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, you know that, don’t you?”

  I didn’t know.

  “When I was down in that river with the foal, Mom found me and ran up to his house for help,” he said. “The old bastard was out of his head on that moonshine of his”, Ferdy looked away, embarrassed, “he raped her, Con, the old fucker attacked her and raped her, while I was down in that fucking river with his horse.”

  There were tears in his eyes now, as well. His voice cracked.

  “Who attacked him then, your Dad?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “No, that useless fucker couldn’t even do that much,” he said. “She did it. Waited until I was home safe from hospital, then went up there, took a hammer with her, waited on him. Mom did it, Con, Mom was his devil. But I guess you always knew that, right?”

  What the fuck was he talking about? What did he mean, “I knew”?

  “She’s the same as you, Con. I love her, but sometimes it’s not her there, somebody else steps into her skin, you just have to wait until she comes back. That’s what real love is. And that’s why you are like this, Con, it isn’t your fault.”

  A chill ran up my spine, an icy hand at the back of my neck.

  “You must have known, Con,” he said. “Everybody in the neighborhood knew. Mom and your Dad, a bad combination, bad blood, they said. That’s why we understand you, that’s why I have always been there, to protect you from yourself. You can admit it now, everybody knows.”

  He dodged as I lurched forward and spewed over the rug Rose got in King Kleen Flooring. I couldn’t get it all out, I was choking, couldn’t breath, I was drowning.

  “You never talk about your own mom, who you thought was your own mom,” he said. “You always only talked about your dad, like you were obsessed with him.”

  That was true, I never talked about her after the funeral. I remembered how they had all paid their respects, all colluded with the default ritual to deflect the truth, but the magic didn’t soothe me, I sensed a lie, even then, before my keen gene was ripened behind all those flag draped caskets. But I just thought we all had the guile to accept the pain free holy scam, I didn’t suspect the real betrayal. My father was missing, of course, but I guess he dredged enough respect to spare her that public shame. Funny none of us cried, though, except for Mrs McErlane, she pumped her grief like a victim, made me uncomfortable, but now I appreciated survivor’s guilt for what it was. So why didn’t I cry? Was Ferdy right? I must have known?

  I got up and rustled around her grandfather’s tapes. Count John McCormack, Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the old man’s favourite singer, he used to watch Citizen Kane just so he could point out McCormack’s scene. Ferdy watched me slot the battered tape, “I Hear You Calling Me�
�, “The Foggy Dew”. But this was the one I needed to hear right now, “Una Furtiva Lagrima”. McCormack might have performed this beside that piano in Hotel Columbus to the other Papal nobility. Maybe, when that street in Rome, within sight of the Vatican, was harvested for the Auschwitz ovens, maybe that was the soundtrack of their sly tears.

  “I still can’t let you do this thing, Ferdia. I hope you can change your mind,” I said.

  “Let’s sleep on it, brother,” he said. “Let’s listen to the music, just the two of us, and sleep on it. Things never seem so bad in the morning. Let’s be brothers tonight, we’ll see what the world throws at us tomorrow, ok?”

  His voice calmed me, I knew I wouldn’t dream tonight.

  “You remember that little girl, Ferdy, the kid with one arm?” I said.

  “Sure, Con, I remember her. Her old man complained about us, said I had been too rough with his son. We went back there to lean on him, get him to drop his complaint about me. Yeah, I remember her, she was that woodworker’s daughter, Con, she was his daughter.”

  McCormack sang in the dark, I didn’t need to hide my tears anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  I slept like a dead man, no dreams, no nightmares, woke up in young Con’s room, knew I wouldn’t settle in Rose’s empty bed. It was early, still dark, I would fix breakfast before Ferdy stirred. No milk, no bread. No food bought recently, that wasn’t like Rose, how long has she been away? Looked outside, the Ford was still there, looked like Ryan asleep in the back seat. Black coffee and Stella Doro chocolate fudge cookies. Ferdy was awake before I got in there.

  “Hurt your leg?” he nodded.

  My ankle was tender, but no need to direct him to any weaknesses.

  “No, just a bit stiff, not used to that bed,” I said.

  He looked comfortable in Rose’s bed, looked at home. I went back to the kitchen, noticed her little notes inscribed around the margins of the calendar. Today, Saturday, December 8th, blank. Looked back over November, every school date, appointment and bill payment, each highlighted in advance, then ticked off as they passed. No ticks in December, but a circle around Thursday, 13th, before it was scribbled out, then the same circle around Sunday, December 9th. A thick, rough circle, blotting out the surrounding dates. Rose didn’t make those crude marks. Ferdy brought his cup to the kitchen, then we managed to avoid each other while we showered, dressed, prepared.

  “You’ve got to go, Con, they will be searching for you soon,” Ferdy said.

  “Yeah? They found me last night. I’m still here, let them come. You won’t stand with them against me,” I said.

  He did a little twist shrug of his head and shoulders, reminded me of Punka.

  “That was just Lutterall’s old guys, they were supposed to bring you in safe, keep you out of trouble,” he said. “No, what I’m worried about is there’s an Israeli team on the ground. They’re tasked to shadow the two Quds Force guys, make sure the objective is completed.”

  “You won’t stand with the Israelis against me either,” I said.

  “It’s gone beyond that now,” he said. “Way beyond. It’s not all about me and you, you know?”

  If only it had been. Just about me and my brother, I could have looked the other way, waited until he was finished, then resurrect our blood brother fantasy.

  “How come Kaffa had to die?” I said.

  Ferdy turned away, looked out the window. I sat at the table, an empty chair beside me.

  “I don’t know, he must have become a problem, that’s all,” he said.

  “He was a good man, Ferdy, and he shouldn’t have died. Told me to forget personal matters, just do my duty, and he was right. Even Duffin is right, and Artie, even that prick!” I said.

  “It depends what you figure your duty is, doesn’t it?” he said. “I reckon my duty is to defend the United States. I aim to do that without hurting the people I care about. I meant what I said that time, you know, I always wanted to make you proud of me, I guess that’s how this all started. What more can I tell you?”

  We were skirting around each other, both knew talk wasn’t going to resolve this thing, no matter how smart the talk was. But better to spin it out until time ran out on us.

  “What was that old Spanish Civil War guy called? Do you remember?” I said.

  “No, we just called him Abe Lincoln, didn’t we? But you remember how excited he was when he was spoofing us his stories about his idealists standing up against the Fascists? That’s pretty much what I feel like now, you know?” he said.

  I was especially proud of him right then. I cherished the pulsing life force of his soul, the hidden nature that only his mother and I could divine. So it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. It didn’t matter if any of that shit from last night was real or not. He had always been with me, my guardian angel, even on my darkest days, maybe especially then, when I thought I was alone. Yes, I had tried to kill him before, thought I owed that to him, and to her, to protect the idol. Time was running out, but I knew I would still be proud of him, even if I had to kill him, now, at the dawning of this day.

  “Say this all works out the way you think it will, what happens then? What’s supposed to happen to me?” I said.

  “Trust me, it will be fine,” he said.

  That was the big difference between him and Artie, Ferdy couldn’t lie to me easily. I knew by his voice, by the way he tried to look me in the eye but couldn’t master the reflex that punched his focus away for a beat.

  “Oh? So you are already dead, right?” I said. “Then this guy that just so happens to look like you, right down to the same war wounds, starts turning up in all these places. Places that you can’t be in because you are still dead, right? Then this new 9/11 happens and somebody is going to track it back to this fucking guy’s apartment, like that poison shit is going to be found here. And the fucking guy is already a nut, discharged with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so he must be insane and guilty, right? But none of that touches you, because you don’t fucking exist anymore, do you? Is that what you mean by ‘protecting me from myself’?”

  That shook him. I could see his body shape changing, tighter now, coiled, ready. We scented combat. His eyes locked on mine. We knew it was coming, this was the only “real” that mattered.

  “You are being paranoid, Con! There is no big conspiracy against you going on here, sometimes things just happen, you have to adapt, work it as best you can”, he said. “I just guessed you would come with me afterwards.”

  The Kimber 45 was right beside me, I had placed it under the table, on the empty chair, before he came in.

  “What about your Iranian friends? What happens to them?” I said.

  “Rostam and Sohrab? Those two fuckers blow themselves up and get a guaranteed Jihad ticket to Quds heaven. They won’t be telling any stories, we get to tell their story for them. Then the real business begins, all this shit is buried and we get on with our lives,” he said.

  “How come you picked the 150th anniversary of Fredericksburg? You trying to make some statement?” I said.

  “No, man, nobody cares about that history shit except you!” he said. “Anyway, I didn’t set the date. I told you, I’m only following orders, the big players have it all worked out. The election is over, now is the time to make things happen.”

  He was trying to hide it from me, but I knew he was lying. It was planned for tomorrow, December 9th.

  It was almost 7am, a ring of silver polished the horizon, traffic getting louder outside, it would be daylight soon.

  “I guess your Quds friends have their fingerprints and DNA pasted all over this apartment, right? Where are they now?” I said.

  “You aren’t listening to me here, bro. You need to walk away, you don’t get a choice this time, this is the end of the line,” he said.

  He sidestepped me to take the Abrin phials from the shelf. His face was granite, his eyes ice, as if I had already departed. I closed my eyes and breathed, easy now to let
go, regress under the cloak of kinship. Ferdy spilled the old man’s tapes along the shelf, collected the phials and clasped them to his chest. I bent over to lift a cassette box that fell to the floor. McKenna, his fireman friend and flute hero. I reached to restore it to its rightful place, but the tapes were dominoed out of place, exposing the gilt corner of a photograph frame that had been hidden from sight and mind. I already knew it was the photo of my presentation with the Silver Star, that used to hang proudly above young Con’s bed. Ferdy moved past me, heading for Rose’s bedroom.

  “Thank fuck you saw sense,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to hurt you.”

  He shouldn’t have said that to me, and he should have known not to say it. Too long living a fantasy, “Rasputin” to the Russian prostitutes, the chosen one for this shit dirty little scheme. Maybe Conroy had fucked with his head too.

  I jabbed three fingers of my right hand into his Adam’s Apple, it bobbed and he blinked as I went for a lock on his right elbow, but he twisted sideways to escape and we tumbled against the table. We wrestled for position, table and chairs scraping out of our way, both of us scratching for the leverage we needed. The poison phials bounced across the floor, he slipped below me, tried to spin me on to my back, I wedged my foot on the stove and forced him down. No talk now, just heavy breathing and straining, two brute rutting stags, locked in sinew, bone and heart. We convulsed closer to stalemate, move against move, reduced to mechanical reflexes, no anger now, no resentment. I had him wedged below me, where the sharp edges of stove and washing machine made a corner, I was ready to strike, but he pulled a fist free and sunk it into my still healing ribs, paralyzed me for a second. He gripped the handle of a drawer, it crashed to the floor, a clay pot that Con had made in craft school broke around us, he caught the purchase he needed to turn me over. We were face to face now, arms and legs entwined, all sweat and grunts. I should have smelt him then, his breath, his body odour, his separate being, but he had none, or, if he had, it was twinned with my own, was part of my own.