“HAVE YOU LOST your mind?”
“Maybe.” Jim wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. The breeze from the window did little but blow the humid air around the kitchen.
Emma tilted against the counter, arms folded. Pure murder in her eyes. He couldn’t blame her. Recounting it from the start, putting the details in order, it sounded moronic. A blockheaded ploy to buy Corrigan off with money he didn’t have and Corrigan’s retaliation with a lawsuit. The bastard’s plan to steal their home out from under them. He wouldn’t blame her if she reached for the cast iron pan and brained him with it. Of course that implied that he actually had brains. His current conduct seemed to preclude that assumption.
“Why?” Sputtering, anger tripping up her words. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”
Jim had no answer for her, nothing that seemed sensible. “I was looking for a solution. The guy needs to go.”
“Why is that your responsibility? Let Kate handle it. Or the police.”
“They can’t do anything, honey. He’s too crafty. But if he doesn’t go away, this is going to spin out of control and someone’s gonna get hurt.”
“People aren’t that stupid. Even in this town, they’re not that go after the guy.” Emma opened the fridge and scanned its interior. Closed it without taking anything. “Even if it did come to that, all the more reason to stay out of it. It’s not your responsibility to keep the peace.”
“Then who, Emm? If the cops and the town can’t do anything, who’s left?”
“It doesn’t have to be you!” Her fists tight at her sides. “Who do you think you are?”
Too hot to think straight anymore. Emma turned to the window and pushed the old pane up higher. All it did was let more humid air billow in. Her reflection stretched in the glass, distorting her face like a funhouse mirror.
An orange glow rippled between her funhouse eyes, like a flame burning up in her head. She pressed her hand against the glass to block the kitchen light and peered through the glass.
“Something’s on fire.”
Jim stood behind her and caught sight of the glow. Out the front door to the yard, where he could see better. Across the field was a bonfire waffling flames into the sky. Even from this distance, he could tell it was Corrigan’s sign that was burning.
Emma drew up next to him, barefoot in the grass. “What is it?”
“Reprisal,” he said.
A sullen fog settled over the drinkers. The eve of the festival, with its new faces and visitors, brought a crackle of life to the old pub but as the boozing got down to business, something changed and the revelry turned wistful. If asked what they were wistful for, few could have put a name to it. Most would be more than happy to cut the question short with a slurred exhortation to go fuck oneself.
Puddycombe was cajoled and harassed into plugging in the old jukebox. He demurred but the patrons were unrelenting and the pub owner regretted installing the old thing. It was meant for show. Restless, the natives held sway. Each song notching below the last in maudlin sentiment. By the time Jim came through the door, the whole damn bar was braying like sick dogs, singing along with Shane McGowan about a pair of brown eyes. The howling bristled the hair on Jim’s neck. No good would come of this, the whole effing town was in its cups.
He squeezed through the swaying bodies, ducking elbows and the raised pints sloshing along to the melody. Pushing through, he gripped the cherrywood trim like a floundering swimmer. Waved the bar owner down.
Puddy slung another pitcher under the tap, leaned in Jim’s direction. His tone cold. “What do you want?”
“Where’s that idiot Berryhill?”
“How should I know?” Puddy shrugged, still testy.
Someone stepped on Jim’s toe and he shouted above the yowling drinkers. “Do you know what that idiot did?”
Puddy leaned on the tap, cold. “Do you want a drink or no?”
“Yeah.” He nodded to what the pub owner was pouring. Puddy set it down and he paid and that was the end of it. Jim craned his neck to see over the crowd. No sign of Bill but he saw Pat Ryder in the press of bodies. Shouted and waved at him. Ryder turned his back to him.
Earlier in the day, he couldn’t imagine who would have trashed his pickup with such viciousness. Now shunned on all sides, they all looked guilty.
“Persona non grata. That’s what you are, Jim.”
He turned. Old Martin Gallagher sat at the end of the bar, alone. Watching Jim’s plight. The Dublin House was packed and yet there was an empty stool next to Gallagher. Seemed even the tourists knew better than to fraternize with the old rubby.
He shouted from where he stood. “So why are you talking to me?”
“Even the outcast hate to drink alone.” The old man nudged out the empty barstool. “Come. Sit.”
He trudged over slow, the condemned walking the plank, and set down. “I’ve always wondered what it was like to be publicly shunned.”
“You get used to it,” Gallagher said. “Cheers.” The last thing Jim wanted was to touch his glass to the toothless old man’s but he obliged nonetheless.
The AC blasted full but couldn’t keep the soupy air from creeping in every time the door swung open. Jim peeled off the T-shirt taped to his back. Hitchens passed by without so much as a look. “It’s like high school all over again.”
“You ought not to complain, Jimmy.” The old man wiped the Guinness from his lips. “You brought this on yourself.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t go crying, son. You broke ground on that Godforsaken land, the Corrigan’s. You woke the sleeping ghosts.”
Here it comes, he thought. “Spare me the crazy talk, huh?”
“Used to be a time when just uttering that name was chancing bad luck,” Gallagher croaked on, happy for an audience. “That’s why no one spoke of it, see? Why would they? Damn awful business.”
Jim watched the room. Fraser and McFarlane bellowed sloppily at one another, arguing the merits of the country’s obligations in Afghanistan. Damn near coming to blows over staying the course or leaving the obstinate bastards to their medieval doom. Five minutes earlier, they’d been talking hockey. The two men were now on their feet, teetering and barking, waking their mate Atkinson who warned them to shut their yaps before he glassed them both with the pitcher. A bottle shattered on the north end of the bar and two knotheads at the pool table went at it, going to the floor in a blur of fists and elbows. They were hustled out the door to finish it in the parking lot.
“Nothing changes, does it?” Gallagher watched the fights with rheumy eyes. “How we managed to survive this long without nuking the world into a cinder is beyond me.”
The old man was waxing. Time to split. Jim drained his glass when the old guy leaned in close. “Do you want to know a secret, Jimmy?”
“Nope.”
“You know his story’s true, don’t you? Our forefathers murdered the Corrigans. Mine, yours.” He nodded at the drunken louts before them. “All of them.”
He should have left then and there. Jim looked at the old man. “You’re drunk.”
“There’s proof,” Gallagher whispered. “The worst kind.”
Jim gripped the man’s arm. Skeletal under the sleeve of rancid tweed. “What proof?”
“You sure you want to know?”
First instinct, damn straight. But Jim wavered and kept his mouth shut. Something in his gut held him back. Fear, reluctance? Some loosed genie that would not go back in the bottle?
“Hey!” A holler cracking over the bar. Berryhill swaggered in from the patio, elbowing bodies aside as he strode right up on Jim. “Who you calling an idiot?”
Jim despised Bill at the best of times but always remained wary. Belligerent and red-eyed, Berryhill was downright scary. Jim bluffed up. “That was one stupid stunt you pulled.”
“I dunno what you’re talking about.” Lager breath blowing hot on Jim’s face.
“What the hell were you thinking torching Corrigan’s sign?”
The best defence, no matter how damning the evidence, is always a flat out, unshakeable denial. Even fools know this. Bill swayed, eyes glassy. “Wasn’t me.”
“The wind changes direction and that fire sweeps directly my way. You could have burnt my house down, you idiot.”
Berryhill struck out, slamming the heel of his hand into Jim’s breastplate. “Told you. Wasn’t me.”
Faces turned, eager to see another brawl brew up. Jim felt his face burn hot. Goddamn high school all over again. His guts ordering him to back off but the pressure from the gawkers egging him on. No way in hell he could win. Bill would stomp his guts in. “Grow the fuck up.”
The big man leaned in, jutting his chin forward. “Take a shot, you pussy. On the house.”
Combat Kyle chittered and giggled like some ape, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Jim knew that if he went down, the little rat bastard would jump in, boots first. He’d seen it before. Jim felt his fist whiteknuckle. It would almost be worth the punishment if he got one clean shot to this troll’s ugly face.
“BILL!”
Stuey McGuire pushed through the onlookers, gangly and panting. “Bill! Your truck’s on fire!”
The black crewcab was already an inferno. Flames licking into the sky, threatening to melt the power lines above. Greasy black smoke choked the parking lot. The acrid stank of melting plastic and burning rubber.
Puddycombe dashed out with a fire extinguisher and emptied the whole canister. A chemical fog roiling over everyone but the flames roared up angrier. Patrons jumped into their cars and pulled away from the burning pickup. Instant gridlock inside the lot as every driver honked and cursed to save their vehicle from the same scorched fate.
Bill’s jaw worked up and down but no sounds came, eyes bugging at the sight of his truck burning to cinders. It was paid for. The sound system he installed, the blower and bodywork, all of it going up like a campfire. All he could do was watch his beloved ride give up the ghost.
The signal from brain to lips finally clicked over and Bill sputtered. “Son of a bitch.”
Jim watched the gates of hell open and swallow Bill’s truck. Puddy tossed away his dead extinguisher, looked at Jim. “What the hell happened?”
Jim had a good guess but kept it to himself, shrugging instead. God knows.
Bill knew. “Corrigan! That motherfucking Corrigan!”
Jim cleared everyone from the lot, hollering and shoving them away. Atkinson and McFarlane pitched in. No one knew how much fuel was in Berrhyill’s truck. Puddy reeled out his garden hose, spraying down the wall of his bar. Half the crowd was drenched by the time the volunteer fire crew screeched in, lights whirling. The tang of wet charcoal stung every nose and Bill, still cursing, had to be dragged away.
Jim jostled through the gawkers pushed to the far side of the alleyway, choking up a hairball of soot. He pushed through the slackjawed faces, looking for the old man. Asking if anyone had seen Gallagher. Someone said he’d stayed inside the pub the whole time.
The fire crew were a blur, unloading gear and barking orders. Jim slipped the barrier and darted back inside the pub.
Puddy had snuck inside moments before. He stood in a puddle of beer, looking over the empty room. Close to tears. “Christ almighty,” he said, seeing Jim. “I was a hair away from losing it all.”
Jim patted the man’s shoulder, told him everything was fine. No one got hurt. “What happened to Gallagher?”
“Dunno. He must have legged it.”