Himself

by Jess Kidd

For the dead have secondhand stories to share with you, if you’d only let them get a foot in the door.

he knows that it can’t be good to stir up a system that has been sumping and rusting to a comfortable dodder.

his mammy had only brought him to the nuns instead of drowning him because she couldn’t find a bucket.

They all lie, so watch yourself, and know that your mammy loved you.

Sometimes a man is in no way honest.

the higher the mind the trickier the knickers.

She’s there, up ahead by the trees, all fucking dead.

Shauna has the look of a rabbit about her, soft and compact, with light-brown hair and pink-rimmed eyes. She moves like one too, with quick dashes and small dazed pauses.

“She calls it her literary labyrinth,”

“Wait until I am seemly, Visitor. I am preparing a respectable facade.”

I want to feel some male warmth.”

Look around you. The dead are watching too.

Mahony is sleeping and the dead are gathering.

Be still. The dead are drawing in. They wring their hands apologetically. They wait for his eyes to open so that they can be seen. They only want to be seen.

“It is a travesty to require a play to be merely suitable.”

when something gets so wronged it gets righted.

“If she’s living why did she leave me and if she’s dead why can’t I see her?”

“They didn’t take you there to get rid of you, Mahony; they took you there to save you.”

Words are capable of flying. They dart through windows, over fences, between bar stools, and across courtyards. They travel rapidly from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. And as they go, they pick up speed and weight and substance and gravity. Until they land with a scud, take seed, and grow as fast as the unruliest of beanstalks.

isn’t it all in the wrist action?’ ”

After all, it’s a dead name: a name never taken, a life never lived.

“The dead are like cats, Mahony. You of all people should know that. They don’t always come when they’re called.”

For the town loves those who give it a shot, even if only to fall on their arses.

They always know all along, it’s just that no one bothers to ask them.” She

“I’m Miss Marple remember? With balls.”

“I wouldn’t have said he’s the murdering type.” “That’s what everyone says about the murdering type.”

a cracked mind often gives a true picture.

By day Mulderrig appears respectable, a solid fat-ankled mammy dressed in patchworked fields. But at night, when Mulderrig lies down under the moon, she’s gypsied to the nines, be-ringed and braceleted with fairy forts.

Annie Farelly sleeps the fitful sleep of an old-lady-killer.

She is dark like him; that much he can see. And

“Nuns move fast and make no noise and they have eyes in the back of their habits:

“Nuns wear itchy knickers so they don’t fall asleep at Mass,

“The Church and the State are paying for the mistakes of your woeful mammies, who are feckless sluts. “The Church and the State are paying for the mistakes of your useless daddies, who are feckless buckos.

But after all you can only be sent to hell once.

Mahony is a luxury that she can’t afford and doesn’t need.

sheep will cleave to a weasel if they’re frightened by a wolf.

“You see it doesn’t count if you don’t say it out loud.”

“This village needs disrupting.”

Mrs. Cauley is as rare a sight at the church as the devil himself.

would be like getting shit from a stone.”

She licked it but it didn’t taste of yellow, although she didn’t know what yellow should taste like.

“The field of attempted murder is more commonplace than you think.” She exhales. “Call it a hobby of mine.”

has been ruined by the books.

the purpose of folklore is that it has no fuckin’ purpose at all?”

Folklore is the record of a dying civilization,

The confessional in St. Patrick’s church had always lapped up tales of suffering and spite. It fed on shame and remorse with quiet, ligneous devotion.

the handwriting, in every case, was a perfect and demonstrable match to that of the deceased.

Such is the power of a handsome, dark-eyed, daring man.

It is a truth universally unacknowledged that when the dead are trying to remember something, the living are trying harder to forget it.

They’re just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: