The Whore-Mother (31 page)

“I'm here, Mr. Sorahan,” Barney said plaintively, his face against the ground. He lay, unawares, between Sorahan and Kiernan's corpse.

“That woman'll burn, Barney,” Soranhan said. “I'll have to get her out. Stay here and stay down.”

“Let
him
go, Mr. Sorahan,” Barney whimpered.

“He's dead.”

The boy crept back quickly from Kiernan's corpse. “Oh Holy Jasus ... I want to go....”

“You've got nowhere to go. Stay there, boy.” Sorahan crawled forward and down the hill to the little field and rose and ran. He wasn't thinking, he wasn't afraid, he was merely running. The shooting began when he was halfway across the field. It was fast and vicious, flying vengeance. Sorahan wasn't thinking. Explanations were ready-made in his mind and he opened his lungs as he ran and yelled,
“Garda, Garda, Garda.”
The lead sang ... six, seven, eight ... all he knew was that the stuff was pouring past him. He didn't count. He ran, crying “Garda,” his coattails flying like wings on a crippled crow. The ninth bullet hit him in the left knee and he went feet over face and slammed the ground with his back and one leg stiff and another, slower, in separate movements, and dived into blackness.

And Barney, watching from the hill, held onto his slipping senses and said, “I'll get the grocer, sur, I'll get the grocer,” and in a dry and desperate terror slid down the back of the hill and ran, whimpering.

And Mrs. Burke stood still and in some distant place, in her kitchen, in her steel-rimmed eyeglasses and Thomas Burke's old dressing gown and said to someone in the place where she was, “We were born to self-destruction, child.”

Powers drove the car straight at Dr. Sullivan's wooden gate and took much of it on the twisted hood up to the doctor's front door. He was swimming on the edge of consciousness. The front door had glass panels in its top half. He staggered to it and smashed the panels with the butt of his gun. Mrs. Sullivan rushed into the hall and into the pit.

“Open it.” His face was savage with pain.

She unlocked the door.

“Where is he?”

“Over the road at the hospital.” The gun wavered close to her face, almost purple with the pressure of fear.

“Call him back here.”

“He has patients, I don't know....”

“I fuckin know, missus. This is my blood. Get him back.”

Fumbling and incompetent, she got her husband. Powers took the phone. “I'm bleedin to death, mister. I've got a gun in her back. No polis. Come back quick w'everythin y'need and fix a hole in me. No polis, mind.”

“I'm coming.”

Powers spilled blood in one of her best armchairs, propped his head up, his eyes open, and Mrs. Sullivan on the edge of the chair across the fireplace. The doctor took two minutes to reach him.

“Stop the blood and kill the pain,” Powers said to the two weaving images in his eyes, “and no polis.”

“No police.”

They humped him to the surgery at the side of the house before he fainted and his gun dropped to the floor. The doctor kicked it aside and went to work.

“Get the Garda now,” Mrs. Sullivan said, from panic, not courage.

“Christ, woman, I promised no police. Do you want to get shot?”

“He's unconscious, for God's sake.”

“Behind him there's more. There's always more. Just shut up and help me.”

“I'm calling the Garda.”

“Try it,” he said grimly. “We won't bugger about with this lot. We'll clean and patch him and he can go. Then we'll keep our bloody mouths shut.”

“If he won't go?”

“Then you'll look after him and keep your mouth shut.”

It would have been simple to lift the phone. The house of the Garda was up at the town end of the street, by the Munster and Leinster bank. It would have been simple, but it was not easy. The thing would have been over. For the moment. Dr. Sullivan knew about punishments, jurymen knew about punishments, the wives of unarmed policemen knew about punishments, punishments hung over the minds of men like gray cheesecloth, inducing a mood of induced inattention. Dr. Sullivan cleaned and sewed and dressed with a professional mind professionally directed. This is a wound. This man is in pain and losing blood. I am doing my job. When it is done, I am minding my own business. This man can rest and go. Sew, dress, sling, bed down.

“Gunshot wounds are notifiable,” his wife said anxiously.

“Will you,
please
, for God's sake, woman? This man never came here. Have you the wit to see that?”

“Yes, Seamus,” she said to the desperation in his voice, and understanding dawned.

They humped him to a bed and watched and waited with him, awed less by the bulk and strength of the man than by the invisible lines that ran out from him—long, mindless, silent, and relentless. To where? To Belfast, to Dublin, to the bank on the comer ... which clerk? ... to the bars in the village ... which bartender, which publican? ... to what grocer's shop, to what fishing boat? Some were known and open, some were not ... the ones who were not, they were the ones who turned the blood gray and nourished the national mood of inattention, look there, look yonder. Do not look here.

“We'll go to bed now,” the doctor said when Powers came to.

“You'll stay where y'are. Where's my gun?”

Sullivan got it for him and humbly handed it over. “My wife's exhausted. Let her go and sleep.”

“Put her chair in than corner. She can sleep sittin up.”

Mrs. Sullivan was propped up in her chair in the corner like a disinherited relation at a wake.

“Feed me, missus,” Powers said, and she struggled to the kitchen.

He drank brandy and ate ham sandwiches. “You've no Guinness's? This stuff's poison.”

“No.”

Mrs. Sullivan took her place in the comer, her ankles crossed and her hands folded in her lap in a posture of rigid composure. The muscles in her neck ached, her face collapsed, and her eyes were wide with weariness.

Sullivan's forearms were on his knees, his face in his hands.

“We come to see you, mister. We ast about McManus. We described him to you. Did he come to you for medicine, we ast you. Y'told us no.”

“Yes.” He didn't look up. He had conspired against them. He couldn't look up.

“All the time y'were lookin after him at the widow-woman's house.”

“Yes.” The room was cold. Why in the name of God didn't I take that boy to the hospital, no matter what that crazy woman wanted? It's too late now and look where it's got us. One of them,
in the house. With a gun
.

“You and her was hidin McManus.”

“No. He was sick. That's all.”

“You said you didn't know him at all when we ast you!”..

“He was sick. I'm a doctor.”

“You're a liar.” Powers saw them sitting there, a new and terrible clearness in his head. With the first shot at the widow-woman's, and the thump in his shoulder, his animal instinct suspended thought and he acted to live. Pain and instinct brought him here without thought. He knew the way, that was all. But now he could think. He had been shot at the house of the widow-woman. This man knew McManus was there. This man knew they were lookin for McManus. His mind hacked at the doctor and his wife like an ice pick. They stood out in his eye—ugly, hostile, treacherous, isolated images full of malignancy.

“You give McManus a rifle.”

“No. No. I have no rifle. No gun at all.”

“Y'were out there last night. The grocer saw you. Y'took McManus a gun.” Than two was the enemy. The cunta'll pay for it. I can wait. I can rest. But they'll pay. They'll know. “McManus shot me. Waited for me. Knew I was comin. You knew I was comin. You told him I was comin. You gave him a rifle. The widow-woman kept up the blinds and lay on thon bed naked to draw me down into the light. He shot me. You shot me.” It was very quiet. They were there. They were helpless. Their helplessness gave him pleasure. He felt the pleasure in his head, in his chest, in his genitals. It was as if parts of him were warm, parts of him cold. His mind was cold. His head was warm. His tongue was cold. His cock was warm. He touched it with the barrel of his gun and smiled.

The doctor saw the action and the smile and his stomach soured. “McManus isn't there,” he said. “I was out there, trying to get my sister-in-law to come in here. Not McManus. Not McManus,” he said as if he would betray Mcanus but not this man on the bed. Not that. “She wouldn't come. He jumped behind the wheel of my car and drove us all the way to Cork Airport.” He said, with a sigh that promised absolution, “He's in England.”

The room was very still. Powers sat, propped on pillows, the clothes cut away from his shoulders and chest, his left shoulder and part of his chest wrapped in bandages and tape. The fingers of his left hand were half-closed. The hand lay outside the tail of his sling; a ham. The fingers opened and closed slowly, like an experiment.

Sullivan felt some relief. He had told something. Not all. Shreds of self-respect clung about him. The three men at Kate's house, the O'Connell man who said to McManus, “It's Powers I want....”
They
shot this man. They would find him. Let them find him. Survive. Let this one go. Let them find him. Let them kill one another. What could ordinary people do against Ireland's secret societies of secret killers who recognized no government, no courts, no parliaments, no rules but their own? What could ordinary people
do?
Cultivate a mood of inattention. That was all that was all that was all.

But nothing is simple. “Who shot me then, mister?”

Almighty God, I didn't think of that. You can't win. Desperately, Sullivan said, “Before God, I don't know. McManus isn't there. He took the plane.” Stick to your point. But you're making it worse, for Jesus sake, and where's the way out?

Powers looked long at Sullivan. He looked long at Mrs. Sullivan. Long enough to paralyze them both. The phone rang. Sullivan went to the next room, his system re-shocked by the sound. He was trembling. Powers came behind him, stood behind him. “Yes?”

“Doctor,” the nurse said, “there's somethin fearful. Can you come quick?”

“What is it?”

“Deasy the grocer. Toormore. He just brought in Daniel Sorahan, the schoolmaster at Bantry. Can you hear me?”

“Go on.”

“Shot in the knee out at Mrs. Burke's. He's unconscious. Are you there?”

“Go on, girl.”

“He's lost a lot of blood but the bleedin's stopped. There's more, doctor.”

“What is it, girl?”

“Deasy and a boy from Bantry brought a dead body with them—a little man shot in the chest. And Mrs. Burke....”

“No!”

“Her place is burned. Deasy said she wouldn't leave and he had to drag her out by the hair. Are y'comin?”

“I'm coming.” He slammed the phone down. “Accident,” he said, “one dead, one dying. I have to go across the road.” Tell no more, tell no more. Hear more from Deasy. “I have to go,” he shouted.

“No polis. She's stayin.”

“No police. God, man,
I'm a doctor.”

“Away on. I have her. Mind that. No fuckin polis.”

“I
said
no police. I have to go.” He ran.

“What is it, Seamus?” Mrs. Sullivan came, shouting.

“Accident. Back,” Powers said, barring her way, “away in t'your perch.” He was not in control. Doubt and confusion needled at him. He sat on the bed, watching Mrs. Sullivan, walking to the window to peer at the hospital across the road, back to the bed. “Too fuckin long,” he said.

“You will not use those words,” she said, salving some dignity.

“I beg your pardon, missus.”

There were too many things at once, phones, people running out and in, questions, doubts: Who shot me? drifted away in the confusion. Where is McManus was his job. It stayed in his mind.

There was silence then for two hours. Powers rested, dozing and waking. Sullivan came back, gaunt, gray, worn to a thread. How much to tell, if he was pushed? What Deasy told him? What the frightened boy Barney told him? What Sorahan mumbled?
Nothing
, by God. The man knew nothing. Tell him nothing. A flame of pseudo-defiance flickered. Don't tell him what he has no way of knowing! Get him to go,
some
way,
any
way.

“He's dead,” he said.

“Who's dead?”

“The man.” It explained the unknown.

“Where's McManus in England?” That was the thing.

“I don't know. He didn't even speak to us on the way to Cork. He flew to England. That's all we know.”

“Gon back in the bedroom.”

Sullivan went obediently in and sat in his appointed place. Powers sat on the arm of Mrs. Sullivan's chair and laid the gun to her shoulder.

“You've heard tell of this,” he said to the doctor. “I'm goin t'ask you, Where's McManus in England? Every time y'say I don't know, I'm gonta shoot this woman in the arm, all the way down t'her hand. You've heard tella that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. You helped McManus. The widow-woman helped McManus. She was fuckin him, the grocer says....”

“He's lying.” Even in extremis Mrs. Sullivan salvaged some family dignity.

“... and if y'helped him once between you, you'd help him twice. Where's McManus in England?”

“My wife,” the doctor said, swallowing and watching the gun against his wife's shoulder, “has a brother in England.” He looked to her eyes and quickly looked away. He had let McManus stay with her widowed sister, now he was sending this man to her brother in England. “McManus was alone with Mrs. Burke before he left the house. He had a letter ... it might have had to do with my brother-in-law. Before God, that's all I can tell you....” He looked like a beaten dog at his wife who looked and sent back her compassion. It was many years since they had felt so close to one another.