Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 68

Train time blues

Train journeys in fiction are often romanticised. But sometimes the reality can be far from the fiction.

I’m on a four hour train, east to west, from one coast to the other side of Ireland. It’s a hot, sunny day, the train is packed and, OK, the a/c is on and working.

Mind you, that was no help when a man with chronic GAPO sat beside me. I thought of holding my breath but he was on the train for two hours.

It’s a holiday weekend so many people are heading to the seaside, like the half dozen guys, all tats and crushed beer cans, in the seats behind me.

They are noisy but not nearly as annoying as the child with the maximum decibel scream, in the booth in front.

The wifi, as usual, isn’t working but I’ve written a new chapter, we’re well into the west and just one hour short of our destination.

I’m looking forward to my first pint in Molloys and then a bite to eat, with my good friend Maria.

Raftery, a 19th century Irish poet, wrote a poem about the road west. Here is a translation.

In Clare of Morris family

I will be the first night

and in the Wall on the side below it

I will begin to drink

to Maghs Woods I shall go

until I shall make a months visit there

two miles close

to the Mouth of the Big Ford.

Not a Pheasant Plucker

This is Day 20 of the Blogging University course I embarked on, 20 days ago, called #everydayinspirations and the topic for this final day is, well, open ended. In fact, it has been suggested we reflect on what we’ve learned. Since I can’t speak for anyone else, I’ll say it has been interesting and, occasionally, inspiring. Many of the tasks set, I found, I was already doing and some, I simply won’t do, because it’s not my style. These include lists of any sort. I don’t see any value in them, apart from shopping. I don’t write articles that suggest I know the secret of happiness or even mild contentment. I won’t tell you how to do things and become rich. I may write articles that outline how I work and provide tips, but only in so much as they work for me.My best advice to anyone,  is read Polonius’s advice to Laertes (Act 1, Sc 3 Hamlet) and heed those words well. I’m blogging to improve my writing, get a body of readers and sell books. If that gets me followers, so be it and all are welcome but, without intending to be offensive, I’m with Jack Nicholson on this, ‘Sell Crazy, someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.’

The following is the first chapter of my latest novel (as yet unfinished).

 

That’s a three dog night, Seanie thought to himself, as he looked at his own breath puffing out in thick clouds of vapour. And that was inside the van. The three of them were stuffed in the front, with the young fella perched on the half seat between himself and Mickey.

Mickey, in the passenger seat was a big lad, lard arsed, in appearance, if the truth were told, but nobody dared. He was as sensitive about his size as he was about his thinning hair, which he wore, combed over, oiled and tucked, in a bundle, behind his left ear. Which explained why some people called him Fat Mickey, but not to his face.

Mickey’s appearance was deceptive, though, Seanie knew. Mickey could climb a wall like a fucking monkey. That’s why he was here.

The young fella’s teeth chattered like a snare drum in a marching band. He was scrawny and skinny, ideal for the job, but his clothes were worn and threadbare. Seanie made a  mental note to buy the young fella a decent winter coat by way of payment for the job he’d do tonight.

Seanie had cased the place the week before. He got a lift down, early in the morning, from Liam the Loaf, who drove a bakery delivery truck every morning from Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien in Ballsbridge to places as far away as Oldcastle in north Meath to The Curragh and back by Naas, before lunch, after starting at 5am. Liam dropped him in Navan and he walked from there to this place, a warehouse, half a mile on the far side of the town. He climbed into a tree in the field opposite the warehouse and hunkered in for a long day of waiting and observation.

What he saw was exactly what he expected to see: a steady stream of trucks arriving and departing laden with goods bound for the city Christmas markets. There was no night time guard on the building, that he could see. A man arrived 7am, in a private motor car and opened the double sided, padlocked gates with a key from the jangling bundle, clipped to his belt. The building, he observed, was long but no more than two stories high, he surmised, from the metal gantry, stairs and access door, around the side. He noted, also, four skylight windows, two on either side, of the building’s roof.

Seanie took pride in his preparations. He climbed out of his perch in the tree as the warehouse shut, for lunch, apparently. The last truck left and the man with the motor car and the bunch of keys locked up before driving off himself. It was then Seanie alighted from his observation post, complaining aloud, as he landed, about the stiffness he felt and about the demands his job made on him.

Some aspects of the job made him uncomfortable. He was introduced to a man in his local,  a Northerner. The man who made the introduction was a local Republican; not hardcore, just a sympathiser who sold An Phoblact, the Republican paper, in the pubs and Easter lillies outside the Church on the anniversary of the Rising and the week of the Wolfe Tone commemorations. Now Seanie had no problem working with Republicans, so long as they didn’t engage him in political discussion or ask him to put his hand in his pocket. He just didn’t trust Nordies. They made him nervous.

The colour of their money was the same as anyone else’s, though, he believed. The man told him he needed 100 Christmas turkeys and when he started to tell him they were for prisoners’ families and dependants, Seanie stopped him there. ‘I don’t care who, or what they’re for so long as I’m paid their value on delivery,’ Seanie told him, not knowing then where he might go to fill this order but the promised fee of £2 a kilo for a 5 kilo bird was more than enough to whet his appetite. First, he’d need to  secure the supply. He wasn’t going to promise anything, especially to this guy, until he was fairly sure he sure he could deliver. They arranged to meet again, four nights later.

It was funny that, Seanie thought, talking turkey. Turkeys were the topic of a conversation he had, only the night before with Turkey Tony, who worked as a part time porter in the markets, among other things. Turkey Tony got his name from working part time in the turkey market, at Christmas, when he was a young fella. But that was a long time ago, Tony was no spring chicken, or Christmas turkey, anymore. Turkeys, these days, were rarely sold, live, as they used to be. Not the way they were in Tony’s time, anyway. Back then, as a turkey porter, you’d have to grab a turkey from the pen and then stand, holding it aloft by the legs, wings flapping and kicking up hell, while the turkey merchants made their bids. But that was then. Nowadays, your turkey was provided, all trussed up by your butcher, gutted and cleaned, its giblets and essentials, shoved up its arse, if you were a posh git who could afford it that way. The rest of the world bought them frozen.

No, what Tony was, was a ‘spotter’, a job that was useful for a certain class of people, who, themselves were always on the lookout for an opportunity. And Tony was the man who could spot an opportunity. And Tony talking turkey with him and him talking turkey with the Northerner, was kismet, Seanie thought.

He loved words like ‘kismet’. It was fate, but he’d never say that. No, he’d say ‘kismet’, just to piss everyone off because they wouldn’t know what he was talking about and were too thick to ask him what it meant, for fear they’d look thick for asking.

Tony knew of a place outside Navan, he told him, that was unguarded and stuffed with turkeys, ready for the plucking.

‘Wha?’ Seanie asked him. ‘No,’ says Tony, realising his mistake, ‘I was speaking meteorically,’ knowing Seanie’s fondness for a smart turn of phrase. ‘Wha?’ Seanie asked, again. ‘The place is full of turkeys, I meant,’ Tony said, at a loss to explain what he meant. ‘Are they fuckin’ plucked or not?’ Seanie asked, exasperated. ‘Jaysus, I’d imagine so and frozen, too. Sure, they’re kept in a warehouse, not a slaughterhouse.’ Seanie decided to leave the turkeys on a back burner, so to speak. That was, until the Northerner turned up and suddenly the prospect of a windfall before Christmas was a likely outcome, with a bit of planning. And that’s what took him to Navan and his perch in a tree to see if there was anything to Tony the Turkey’s story.

So now here they were, freezing their nuts off in a beat up Bedford, with no heating. He was trying to put his head in the game but he was distracted. Before he left home his mammy said she was feeling ‘a bit off’ and was planning to visit the clinic that evening. Now Seanie knew the oul’ wans thrived on jawing about their ailments, their corns and their cures and who has a touch of this and a touch of that and how so and so has ‘women trouble’ or a spot of catarrh, consumption or the unspoken, whispered about horror, the Big C itself or, as they called it, a ‘chewmore.’ The nagging thought in Seanie’s mind was that his Ma was known for dishing out the remedies. She never took a day off work or had a sniffle or a cold in her life. She’d talk about her bunions, corns and ‘various’ veins with the best of them, because, he suspected, there was a competitive element to it all. But she never got sick and now he was worried.

‘A fucking three dog night,’ he said, aloud.

‘Wha?’, the young fella asked.

‘Wha?’ Seanie said. He looked at Mickey who was staring at him, expectantly. Then it dawned on him he’d spoken aloud.

’Three Dog Night were a rock band. The name was what Aborigines used to call a freezing night ‘cos on a cold night, they’d dig a hole and hunker down with a dingo, on a really cold night, they’d have two dogs but if it was fuckin’ freezin’ like tonight, you’d need three dogs.’

Seanie was aware of the young fella and Mickey staring ahead of them, into the bleak December chill, their silence a deafening testimony to their confusion and complete lack of understanding. Right on cue, the snow fell; first in a few flaky drops that landed, then skidded from the mucky windscreen in front of them and then, like layers of white blankets, waving in the wind before lying like a bed on the country lane, the hedgerows and the fading warehouse in front of them.

‘Christ, that’s all we fuckin’ needed,’ Mickey cursed, ‘are we gonna do this or not?’

The young fella’s teeth beat a machine gun tattoo, before Seanie could answer.

‘Yeah, c’mon. Let’s get to it’.

He gunned the engine of the Bedford and it lurched forward, down the slight incline, gaining speed, as it hurtled towards the rusted gates before them.

‘Jaysus,’ Mickey yelled, holding his hand out to the dashboard to brace himself. Seanie could feel the young fella beside him, draw his legs up and lean into the gap behind his left arm and his stomach.

The van hit the gate, the radiator just level with the padlock. It snapped and the gates swung open, one of them popping from half its hinges and hanging at an angle in the road as the van’s momentum brought it right up to the warehouse’s front entrance.

They worked without speaking. Seanie had run through the plan with Mickey in the van. He, Mickey, was to take the young fella up the gantry and, from there, hoist him on to the roof. Mickey would then follow the young fella, onto the roof – a feat that appeared more wishful thinking than a done deal, given Mickey’s size but the big lad was surprisingly agile and had a successful career as a cat burglar behind him – anyway, once they were both on the roof, they were to jemmy one of the skylights and then lower the young fella, tied with a rope, to the warehouse floor.

It was a tried and tested routine and the young fella was an old hand at it. Once he was inside, he’d unlock the door, Seanie would back the van inside and then they’d close the gate and door and pack the van in comfort. Mind you, with the gate hanging off its hinges on one side, propping it up so that it  looked intact, was easier said than done. Seanie made as good an effort at it as he could but he figured the late hour, it was 3am, the snow, the cold and the remote location would work in their favour. They just had to get a move on and not dally about.

Everything went as planned. Mickey and the young fella got on the roof. Mickey jemmied the skylight, tied the young fella off and lowered him down. less than a minute later, the door was open.

That was when everything started going pear shaped. As soon as the door slid open and the warehouse floor was flushed with light, the commotion started. Commotion was not an adequate word to describe the cacophany. It began as a shuffling, whooshing noise from what looked like banks of tarpaulin covered crates, at the far end of the warehouse. That was soon replaced by what sounded like the amplified noise of a giant steam bath, boiling and bubbling.

‘What the fuck is that?’, Mickey asked, over the din.

‘I don’t fucking know, do I?’, Seanie shouted, walking determinedly towards the covered crates and the bubbling din.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. The closer he got to the crates, it became almost unbearable. He felt as though he was choking, like he wasn’t just standing in a toilet, he was upto his neck in shite. Holding his cupped hand over his nose and mouth, he reached down, grabbed a corner of the tarp and yanked it over the top of the crate.

‘Fuck,’ he shouted.

Seanie dropped his hand and stood, gaping, at the sight that greeted him. The crates weren’t crates. It was one giant container or pen and it was full of turkeys, live turkeys.

‘Jaysus, Seanie, they’re turkeys.’

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Seanie said, still staring, mouth agape at this turmoil of flying feathers and gobbling birds.

‘What’re we going to do?’, Mickey asked.

Seanie marvelled at Mickey’s capacity to state the fucking obvious. The only problem was, he didn’t have an answer.

Starman: Life on TrappistOne #5, Inspiration

CATCH UP

TRAP1                 https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/05/starman-life-on-trappistone-2/

TRAP2               https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/12/starman-life-on-trappistone-2-2/

TRAP3                https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/20/starman-life-on-trappistone-           3-obsession/

TRAP4                 https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/26/starman-life-on-trappistone-4/

 

This was no longer ‘a God awful small affair,’ whatever that meant, Abraham thought, as the truckBot, piloted by the silent, somber postBot, sped through the darkened streets of TrapCity.

His mind raced to catch up, searching for the purpose of this summons, for how he might’ve slipped up, searching for inspiration that could turn this dilemma to his advantage. The only problem was, he knew, since he had no answer for the first two questions, then there was none for the final question. ‘I’ll play it by ear,’ he thought, like he heard in the song on The Tablet.

He noticed the Truckbot didn’t pause or slow at ReAs and this gave him further cause for worry. He didn’t know where else he could be brought since he didn’t have the Unit designation to venture into TrapCity, any further than the ReAs to which he’d been assigned.

His question was soon answered. The truckBot swerved abruptly into an underground driveway beneath what appeared to be a towering, grey building. He only knew that because of the shadow it cast. The truckBot, steered by the postBot, ground to a halt beside an arched doorway. The hooded door on Abraham’s side opened with a faint hiss. He stepped out. As soon as he did, the truckBot door hissed and shut again, before speeding off. He looked at the arched doorway, before him. They opened, inward, before him, with a swish.

He stepped inside. The arched doorway swished, closed, behind him. He grabbed the wall to steady himself as the box into which he stepped, began to rise. For a second, there was no sound but his own breath and, he thought, his heartbeat. He was only adjusting to the ascending movement, when the music started.

What are we coming to

No room for me, no fun for you

I think about a world to come

Where the books were found by the golden ones

Startled and confused by this new development, he knew it was a Starman song and, in his head, he was singing along,

Written in pain, written in awe

By a puzzled man who questioned

What we were here for

He didn’t have time to finish. The ascending box stopped, as abruptly as it began. So did the music. The arched doors, swished again,  and opened, inwards. He was greeted by a brilliant light and a voice, that said, “Unit 158, Welcome, we’ve been expecting you.”

Oh You Pretty Things lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC, TINTORETTO MUSIC

TO BE CONTINUED

 

PorterGirl’s Journey into Joyce

Forget what I said about the last chapter being the strangest – this is definitely stranger. I struggled a bit with this one, but I think the overall gist is that this talks about lots of characters and places, through the guise of a pub quiz. It took me quite a while to come to […]

via Finnegans Wake: Book 1.6 — Secret Diary Of PorterGirl

Nothing’s ever what it seems

Miss Brown’s daily preparation began with a sweeping entrance as she crossed the classroom to the dais in five brisk paces.

She plonked her handbag – usually one of the black patent variety that were then so de rigeur – on the seat and in one elegant turning motion, began the morning prayer with a bow to the crucifix above the blackboard and without a single glance at us.

The morning devotion completed, her own ritual began.

First, she took a compact mirror from her handbag and cupping it in one hand, gave her hair and face a once over. Light adjustments were made to her, carefully coiffed, hairdo and the top of her pinky checked straying eyelashes. She’d pout her lips at the mirror to review the status of her lipstick. Sometimes she’d grimace at the mirror like she was about to snarl.

Then came the stocking ritual. She raised her leg onto the dais and stretched, feeling and stretching from her ankle to her upper thighs, stretching and straightening along the way.

After that came the top which she’d adjust with a sharp tug by both hands from the waistline.

Then she turned her attention to us. She already had ours. She looked soft, warm, glamorous and fragrant. It was a heady mixture for a four year old. She was like a film goddess and the woman on the sweetbox at home. She was like no-one we’d ever seen before.

I suppose I could have had a worse introduction to schooldays. Miss Brown was no angel of mercy. She was tough and took no nonsense. She got our respect and our fear in equal measure.

What makes a Story? Guest Writer: Tanya Cliff

Dermott Hayes challenged me with an open-ended prompt: Define what I think makes up a good short story and pull a work of his apart against that measure.

My definition of a good short story is simple: Does the story hold my attention? By that definition, a good “short” takes many forms: six-word staccatos, elegant and elongated verse, perky prose, poetry of all kinds, creatively captioned pictures – art or photography.

A good “short” story can be told, in my opinion, in an infinite variety of forms.

What makes up a great short story? For me, the answer is equally simple yet difficult to achieve: Does the story that holds my attention leave me with a point worthy of pondering? I elected to examine Postcard from a Pigeon with my “good” and “great” short story benchmarks in mind. Tanya

A review of Postcard from a Pigeon, a short story by Dermott Hayes:

If there is a point of peril in the preoccupation with pets, Tito – the multi-lingual, Dublin bar dwelling, Albanian refugee – suffers miserably from it. In the beginning of the story Paddy, the local pigeon, has either taken a tumble or rumbled with a scavenging crow, leaving the poor creature with a broken wing. Enter Tito:

“Tito kneeled and spoke to him. He made pigeon sounds. He cooed and billed and murmured softly. Paddy squinted at him ferociously, scrabbling frantically if Tito moved. He kept his beak wide open but never made a sound.”

I’m thinking Tito is a generally decent fellow. Not everyone would rescue an injured bird, especially a “scrawny and mottled” specimen of the pigeon variety. Let’s face it, pigeons are messy birds with a fondness for leaving their droppings all over our human stone and metal masterpieces. I’m feeling an overall affection for Tito.

The time comes to release Paddy, and we are told:

Tito lifted him gently to his face, speaking softly to the bird.

My fondness for Tito is growing. Paddy’s release is a communal celebration:

Half the pub turned out for Paddy’s departure. It was like an American wake and the denizens of Bruxelles were seeing off a member of the family. Pigeon stories abounded.

Had Dermott stopped there, I would walk away sleepily satisfied with the dulling drone of a “happy animal release story” buzzing in my ear – the flapping of freshly mended pigeon feathers.

Tito slumped.

I feel my fondness for the man with the rumored command of ‘pigeon’ fading. As the pigeon takes flight, we are left with the foreign man, stripped of his kindness-to-animal niceties:

Occasionally, as he sat in the bar on a Thursday afternoon waiting with everyone else for their pay packets, Tito’s humour would change from the breezy sparkle that saw him through years of hard knocks and strife, to a morose and brooding sulk. He would drink more than his customary pint of Guinness and snarl and snipe at his co-workers, foreign and Irish.
Sometimes he shunned their company and in a show of defiant bravado, he’d lavish charm on the nearest pretty female customer.

I am beginning to get the feeling that this Dublin bar is the type of place where a small-town American girl like myself shouldn’t venture, at least not without her menacing guard ostrich in tow. Tito is a complicated bird, however; his tale isn’t all bleak. We are told that

“He honed his wits in a hostile world with a sharp wit and natural intelligence”.

What’s not to like about that? He also has “an easy facility with languages”. Yes, we know; he even speaks ‘pigeon’. Not every fellow can do that.

From here, Dermott quickly moves us to a shady place. There is talk of a “Croatian girlfriend” and of Tito being a “deserter” and maybe even “Bosnian”. Oh my! We hear whispers of “involvement with smugglers” and a “ruthless Albanian underground”.

Loving the mischief he could cause, Tito played up to the legend and fuelled the rumours. It was only on very rare occasions people got a glimmer of light through the fog.

I have decided that Tito has a penchant for pigeons but not people. My fondness for him has faded to a spreading of curious wonder peppered with a slight seasoning of dismay. The seasoning is quickly enhanced by the heat of revelation: Tito’s girlfriend is in the late stages of pregnancy, she has dumped him, and they have had a ‘public confrontation’ – Tito’s words – over the matter. Viktor, a bar employee, tells a different version of the story:

“He went mad,” Viktor, a kitchen porter, recounted later to everyone on ‘cowboys corner’, the part of the bar unofficially reserved for regulars,” he shouted and banged on the doors. He wouldn’t go away when they asked him. Then they said they would get the police but he stayed and shouted and kicked the door.”

That settles it: Tito is a disturbed, foreign bird disrupting the Dublin nest – an emu – a big, bully bird. He takes up a lot of space; and when his feathers get ruffled, everyone feels it. Of course, this IS a bar. Guinness inspired gossiping rarely hits its mark directly. And, lest we be too hard on Tito, Dermott places this reminder in the midst of the story:

Tito nursed the bird back to health on a bed of old glass cloths in a shoebox hidden in the cellar, feeding it every day with meal mushed with milk and water squeezed through an old sock.

Somewhere under his coarse emu feathers, Tito has a soft, downy underside, at least where it concerns birds. Like a miserable, middle-aged wife, Tito disproportionately influences the mood in the entire bar:

“Whattahella is the matter with everyone?” Sergio asked no-one in particular, “issa likea funeral in here.” Jimmy stared into his Guinness, his fifth of the day. It was just five pm.


“It’s Tito,” Jimmy barked hoarsely as he lit another Sweet Afton, “he’s depressed about de burd.”

Here, Dermott’s saccharine satire takes its highest form. Jimmy, bar regular and friend of Tito, comes to the conclusion that Tito would feel better if he receives a letter from Paddy, the pigeon. Dermott, the narrator, or his imaginary storytelling “I”, is left to contemplate the ridiculous task. He ultimately decides to pen the title-promised “postcard”:

First I thought I’d get a postcard of the Dublin port landmark and then dismissed the idea as patronising and obvious. A postcard of Bruxelles  would do. It would save me a walk in the rain too.


“Dear Tito,” I wrote, “How’s it going? I’m back with me mates down the Pigeon House and I have you to thank for it. The lads here are great crack and the wing has come on so much, the pain has gone. I’ll never forget your kindness to me nor the taste of that bleedin’ sock. Take care of yourself, I have to fly. All my love, Paddy the Pigeon.”


Although I was unsure if the facetiousness of the final sentence might shatter the carefully constructed veneer of absurdity, Jimmy was very pleased with my effort and told me, stashing it carefully in the pocket of his jacket, he would pass it on to Tito when he saw him.

Tito is an ecstatic emu, and I am beginning to feel a resurging glimmer of fondness for the bully bird.

He strutted and preened about the pub, joking and laughing in a Babel of languages. To everyone who would listen he showed the postcard, brandishing it with pride and a hint of whimsy.

Really, who wouldn’t want a letter from their missing or deceased pet? If we end here, I may not be sleepily satisfied, but I could at least take a snickering snooze. Good is okay, isn’t it? No, Dermott is determined to push my brain past some barrier of great. This story is about to take flight.

Tito disappears without a trace. One month later, Viktor, the kitchen porter, brings a curious story to the bar about a “nameless Albanian nomad shot dead in a Bosnian alley”. The news is received oddly with a mix of relief and detached curiosity. We know that the body belongs to Tito from the frayed newspaper cutting:

’Eets in the hedline,’ explained Viktor holding the clipping aloft with a dramatic flourish, and translating, ‘PIGEON POSTCARD MURDER CLUE.’

There is no feathery Karma at work here. The kindness Tito extends to the pigeon after Paddy’s broken-wing brawl, flies past the Albanian nomad completely in the moment of his presumed street fight. And slowly, a reflection takes shape in my mind:

Paddy flies – happy sighs; Tito dies – no one cries.

Postcard from a Pigeon reveals its ponderable point of brilliance – my crux of a great story. While we celebrate the flight of the recovered local pigeon along with the folks at the Dublin bar, we look upon the demise of the damaged foreign emu with cool indifference. Why? Are we stubborn emus with a preoccupation with pets over people, or have we exposed our bias for the local bird? There will be no sleep here; in this story there is a point worthy of pondering.

Tanya Cliff

When I was asked to get a Guest Writer for my blog as part of the #everydayinspiration blogging course, I immediately thought of Tanya Cliff who writes fantasy book, which, you might imagine, has nothing in common with my own chosen oeuvre of crime fiction and short stories. But Tanya excels at good narrative, complex plotting and characterization, essential features of any good fiction. There were no rules, choose any story of mine and, given your own criteria and assessment of what makes a good story, apply those in a critique of my story.

If you want to read the original story, here’s the link

https://dermotthayes.com/2016/05/08/postcard-from-a-pigeon/

Check out Tanya Cliff at https://postprodigal.com/

Signs of the Time #5

More thoughts on the writing of James Lee Burke

Ok, there are patterns that repeat themselves in the books of James Lee Burke, who carries a stock company of character actors, like film director, John Ford, who occupy, colour and drive his stories.

First, there’s Dave Robicheaux, the main protagonist in the twenty strong Robicheaux series. He’s a flawed but principled character whose life has taken its tumbles, some self imposed, some cruelly circumstantial.

Then there’s Clete Purcel, his one time partner in NOPD Homicide and his lifelong friend; another flawed character with a heart of gold who is, in many ways, Robicheaux’s untamed alter ego.

Other characters populate their lives and their adventures; Dave’s wives, who are invariably strong willed women; Alafair, his adopted daughter whom he rescued from a crashed aeroplane, Batist, his uneducated black, Cajun bait shop helper and, of course, Tripod, the three legged coon.

More recently, as the main characters have aged, new characters have emerged, most particularly, Clete’s long lost daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, a complex figure with a shady past as a mob assassin who aspires for redemption as a film maker but who can never escape her past.Clete also has a penchant for chasing lost causes in the romantic stakes.

Then there’s the cast of villains, many of whom, like, for example, Wyatt Dixon, the born again Rodeo clown with a murky past, whose intentions, though distorted by a warped aspect of reality, are essentially good.

But then there are the ultra villains and these are usually psychopaths whose actions and motives defy logic and appear to embody and exude the essence of evil.

Alongside them, are the ultra rich, immoral profiteers, who will stop at nothing to destroy the earth and its resources, for the simple cause of power, glory and wealth and damn the begrudgers.

Oh, and there’s also a learned, well intentioned, intellectual, battering against the odds, to save the world around him.

Light of World finds the boys on holidays in Montana with their respective daughters, guests of an Albert Hollister, author, rancher, nature lover and eco-warrior. They soon find themselves thrown into a war against a ghost, or, at least, someone everyone believes is dead, a psycho serial murderer who appears to have Alafair in his sights.

This man, one Asa Surrette, who adopts the character and name of an ancient Roman, pursues his targets relentlessly and with unremitting cruelty. Like all good thrillers, it’s a race against time and clues are revealed, reluctantly, along the way. Of course, Surrette’s ties with the local billionaire energy mogul and his family, are some of the clues revealed along the way.

It’s not all doom, gloom and bible thumping cleanse and repent, though. There’s a fair share of humour and none, perhaps more than the revelation in the final chapters, of Surrette’s primary target from the beginning.

But I’ll leave that to others to discover. I couldn’t help thinking it was Burke’s own ironic exhortation to his devoted literary followers, a kind of paraphrasing of Bob Dylan when he sang, ‘don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters’.

Whiskey Fire in The Liberties

Day 17 of the Everyday Inspiration course by Blogging University requires that I use ‘A Map as my Muse’, so I’ve chosen to repost, here a poem I wrote about a fire that occurred in the district where I live in The Liberties, Dublin. The Whiskey Fire occurred when a fire in a bonded warehouse caused an explosion which ignited another building, next door and that was full of bonded barrels of whiskey. The blazing whiskey flowed through the streets and efforts to put in out were to no avail until James Robert Ingram, the chief fire officer, came up with an ingenious solution to halt the flow of flaming whiskey.

I call the poem, Organic because, first, the idea came to me while I was shopping in an organic market next door to a new whiskey distillery. The second reason will become obvious when you read the poem.

ORGANIC

I buy my fruit and veg,

fertilised and organic

on a square in The Liberties

where whiskey once flowed,

aflame,

through streets

where people

took to their bare feet

to fill their boots

and drink

the scalding spirit

Pigs, squealed and fried

and chickens roasted,

people died, toasted

not by fire

but by flaming spirit

and those who fought

to douse the fire with water

only fanned the flames

Until James Robert Ingram

Chief Officer

of the Dublin Fire Brigade

said the only way

to win this fight

was to smother it

with shite

Glitch in the Matrix

Two blind sisters sitting on a train carriage wearing matching mirror shades stop him in his tracks. An inexplicable fear grips him.

He misses the Gatwick train. It’s early rush hour on a Monday morning in London. The city’s awake and in full swing. The suburbs pile into the metropolis and the trains run on time.

Someone’s stepped on his grave. A shiver runs through him.

Athens airport, waiting for a cheap charter flight that will bring him home to London and from there to Dublin. He’s not sure when everything began to unravel.

His friends on the beach in Naxos give him a send off fuelled by sex, drugs and cheap retsina. The night’s sand strewn revelries are as redolent as the smell of the beach party bonfire on his clothes as he stuffs his sparse belongings into a bag. He catches the island bus from their beach at dawn to catch the first ferry from the islands to Piraeus, the port of Athens.

The bus arrives in Naxos as the last passengers scurry aboard. He has time to grab a bottle of water, a carton of goat’s yoghurt, two oranges and a portion container of sweet mountain honey before he scrambles past the last sailor with his ticket in his mouth, his rucksack on his back and his purchases, struggling to break free from his shaky grip.

The early morning mid summer sun has already begun to scorch the ferry deck before she leaves the port of Naxos on her twelve hour, island hopping journey. With no berths and an economy deck ticket, he seeks out a suitable pitch among the tourists, the fruit and vegetable traders, the families travelling to weddings and funerals and baptisms on neighbouring islands and the farmers, herding kid goats for market.

He pitches up astern, delighted with his luck to find an unoccupied, sun bleached bench. The boat travels north east, there’s no hope of shade so best to make do with what’s to be got. The locals, wise in the ways of the Adriatic sun, snag the best shaded spots.

There is no rush although the ferry’s already fifteen minutes late. The sea is calm: up close it reflects the cloudless blue sky while remaining translucent, on the horizon it sparkles playfully between jade and aquamarine. They would make up time between the islands.

The sun would blaze as the day awoke. People would stretch and drink sweet mint tea and strong coffee. The old men would sip Ouzo and iced water. Children would play and the women would find time to prepare noon day snacks of  homemade tsatziki made with fresh yoghurt and cucumber, chick pea hummus drenched in their own olive oil,  big red tomatoes and dry, salty feta cheese with pitta bread and succulent green olives.

After two months living cheap and free as a naked, hippy, beach bum he grew used to a pace of life when there was a time for everything and everything happened in its own time.

Now he’s travelling with a purpose and a destination, home. He has little money. Perhaps enough to get him home. For the moment he forgets his purpose and gives in to the exhaustion creeping over him since he set foot aboard the northbound ferry.

He stretches out on the bench and lays his head on his rucksack as a pillow. He can feel the sun’s heat already bouncing off the ferry deck. He stretches a cotton poncho over his head  for protection as the boat’s lazy progress out of Naxos lulls him to sleep.

Two hours later he’s jostled awake by an old Greek woman covered in a black shawl who pushes his legs from the bench to gain a seat. He blinks himself awake in the dazzling bright heat but concedes little more space to this grumpy siren.

Slowly, he sits up and nudges his legs along the bench so he can grip his knees and examine his tormentor. Her skin is as brown as bark. She examines him in turn with her coal black almond eyes half shut. Then she smiles a toothless gash and they laugh as she babbles something incoherent in Greek.

Another Greek moment, he thinks, as he curls up again into his waking daytime slumber. ‘Must be Santorini,’ is his last thought.

He awakes again when the sweet, pungent smell of freshly chopped mint invades his nostrils. The bark brown lady has spread a linen cloth on the bench between them and is busy setting out her mezes, producing everything from the recesses of her heavy black shawl: bread, olives, mint, cheese and a bag of cold koftas, minced lamb  and rice meatballs reeking of mint and cumin spice.

He can feel his stomach lurch as salivary juices swamp his hangover parched throat. He sits up and shakes his head into wakefulness. The ferry’s moving at a fast clip. The wind has got up. The big boat heaves and barges its way over the Adriatic swell. The wind burns his skin already tanned to a hazelnut consistency.

He pulls out his small bag of rations. The yoghurt is no longer cold but it has the thick consistency of the best of the island yoghurts. He fishes in a side pocket of his rucksack for a spoon which he uses to stir the honey into the pot of thick, creamy yoghurt. Then he peels one of the oranges he has bought and slowly drops the segments into the mixture, stirring all the time. Although it looks like lumpy sludge, it is the midday meal that had sustained him for months.

Bark brown lady watches him with amusement and grins with approving delight when their eyes meet. She spoons tsatziki and hummus alternately into her own mouth with a curled up chunk of flat bread. She holds the minty bag of kofta up and waves it by way of an offering to him. He takes one, smiling politely. Then he gets up and ducks inside the ship’s wheelhouse, emerging with two paper cups filled with water. They are happy. They are at peace .

For the next five hours he drifts in and out of sleep roused only by the comings and goings on the boat deck as the ferry docks at island after island, Paros, Mykinos and all the others, picking up and setting down passengers and cargo. Only the heat remains constant until in the last hour of the journey when, as Piraeus hoves into view, the evening light fades and night’s shroud of bath house humidity descends.

The pulse of the city beats faster than the island’s. Everyone disembarking had a purpose and a new urgency in their movements. He feels as though the pier itself is moving when he alights gingerly, planting both feet firmly before hauling his rucksack onto his back and looking around to get his bearings.

He spots the airport bus among the bustling rows of waiting buses, engines revving impatiently. Passengers and drivers move hither and thither. The airport bus is packed when he scrambles aboard. He is hungry, tired and oppressed by the Athens’ night’s sweaty, choking heat.

The half hour journey to the airport terminal goes on forever. The driver finds every roundabout on the way and every stop light finds the bus. His arms ache from keeping himself upright as the unventilated bus swings around and round, occasionally lurching forward on a straight stretch with a jolt of acceleration. By the time it reaches the terminal it is close to midnight. He slumps off, relieved and giddy.

His plane is delayed for two hours and won’t leave until after 2am at the earliest. Everything is closed in the airport apart from one coffee stall selling espresso size cups of Greek coffee, as turgid and pungent as its Turkish counterpart. He hasn’t eaten for more than twelve hours since the honey yoghurt and oranges and Brown bark lady’s delicious kofta.

Shoulders aching with fatigue, weak from hunger and the clammy heat, he finds a seat near the check in desk and falls asleep.

The flight home is worse than the cliff road bus ride he took the previous morning across Naxos. Then he could see where he was going even though that meant the occasional gaze into oblivion. Now the small charter plane trip to London is like a four hour rollercoaster ride. At least he has a row of three seats to himself so he stretches out and prays that he won’t retch because he has nothing to disgorge.

In London he learns his flight to Dublin doesn’t leave until the following day so he breaks out his emergency supply of sterling, a crumpled twenty pound note and buys a return ticket to London’s Victoria station. At least in London he can get a drink and some food, rest in a park before making his way back to Gatwick.

Naxos is on another planet. The train journey is a nightmare of heaving bodies rushing, pushing, talking aloud. Music blaring, fast food sizzling, tickets clicking, trains speeding, ‘PASSENGERS FOR THE 10.30 TO LIVERPOOL PLEASE GO TO PLATFORM NINE…outside newspapers, union jacks and Big Boobs and Booty magazines, black taxis, red buses, swooping pigeons, crowding commuters bumping each other impatiently.

He finds a Lebanese kebab shop near the station and sits down with a and a glass of milk. He closes his eyes, eats and drinks. After he orders mint tea he counts his remaining coins while he waits. He has seven pounds left to get him through the day and the night to follow. He finds a park outside and a bench to sit and shiver on.

The howl of the morning commuter traffic in the station is louder than the day before. Of course, he thinks, it’s Monday now. Yesterday was a quiet Sunday prelude.

‘Where’s the Gatwick train?’ he asks the harassed British Rail porter.

‘Platform ….’teen’, he shouted, waving his arm at somewhere behind him while checking tickets from passengers scurrying by to catch their own train. He loses the first half of the platform number in the station clamour.

He spots a sign ‘airport’ with an arrow pointing at platform sixteen. Carriage doors are slamming all round and a porter waving a red flag is blowing a whistle. Two trains on platform fifteen and sixteen and chuffing and puffing and ready to depart.

‘Which one goes to Gatwick?’ he asks the harried porter who waves a shrug in his direction. He makes a choice and gets on the Platform sixteen train, tossing his bag inside and getting his foot off the platform as the train starts to move.

He moves along the carriage into a narrow corridor. And there they were. Two blind sisters. Must be twins, he thought, dressed alike and staring, blindly, through their mirror shades. He feels disjointed, interrupted, disturbed. He’s confused.

He finds a seat in the next carriage. He wonders where he’s seen them before, those two ladies in their matching box tweed overcoats and mirror shades. He wonders why his mind is full of that old ditty, ‘oh, I do like to be beside the seaside, oh I do like to be beside the sea…’ He shivers.

The train picks up speed as it rushes through the suburban stations without stopping. A conductor appears and he proffers his ticket.

‘Are you going to Gatwick airport? The conductor asks, ‘You’re on the wrong train.’

He’s not surprised. He hears himself asking when the train will stop so he can get back to the airport but he knows the answer already so he doesn’t hear the reply.

He gathers his bag and prepares to leave the train as it makes its first stop somewhere in the Essex countryside. The fog that had enveloped him since his arrival in London was lifting. He steps off the train and turns left, walking jauntily to the steps to crossover to the opposite platform. He passes the two blind sisters and sees himself waving at them through the reflection in their sunglasses.

Now every sense bristles and tingles. He can smell diesel with the summer ripe bouquet of the station’s flower beds. He can hear the approaching train that will take him back to Gatwick. He can see the other passengers waiting, standing about on the platform. He knows which one to look for. He walks straight upto her.

‘Excuse me, please don’t think I’m crazy…’ he says. She looks up from the magazine she’s reading and smiles, quizzically. ‘This may sound like the strangest thing you’ve ever heard but do you live in a cottage in the Cotswolds and you’ve just been home to see your mum because she’s ill?’

The train pulls into the station. Neither of them pays any attention. The moment is suspended in time. ‘Yes,’ she answers, smiling, puzzled, ‘how did you know?’

He doesn’t answer immediately. He can see everything clearly now. He knows where he is…and when.