Chapter Five
Five
St. Malachy’s Church sat on the intersection of Carrickcroppen Road and Carrickcloghan Road, on a hill surrounded by a Catholic cemetery that was bathed in rare sunlight on this frigid Sunday morning.
Inside the wooden doors of the church, Father Sean ended his mass with the Concluding Rites, turning to thank the other priests, then raising his hands towards the choir as he gave them a word of appreciation, and finally he addressed the congregation gathered in front of him.
There were fewer than eighty-five parishioners, the pews one third empty today, and this was a disappointment to Father Sean, but such were the times.
He smiled nonetheless, because those who did attend deserved his best.
His accent was strong and his countenance kind.
“In your moment of prayer today, I ask you to say a special prayer thanking the Lord for family and for those you love who are not family but nevertheless hold a special place in your heart. Family and friends are the most precious gifts, so remember them in your prayers.” He spread his arms and smiled, his eyes tightening behind his thick eyeglasses. “May the Lord be with you.”
In the back pew, far to the right side of the sanctuary facing the altar, a middle-aged man in a worn but smart tweed suit, his heavy coat and his herringbone cap in his lap, spoke in cadence with the rest of the congregation now. “And with your spirit.”
Father Sean gave the sign of the cross, asked the Almighty God to bless them, then announced that the mass had ended, and that all should go forth in peace.
In the back pew, Jon Jo Sheehan stood, nodded and smiled to a few around him that he recognized from his weekly visits here at St. Malachy’s Church, but he spoke to no one.
When the recessional was all but complete, he ducked out a side door alone, squinting into the bright blue Sunday sky, and a smile crossed his face.
It was cold, but the air felt crisp and clean, and the sun was welcome. It had been a good mass; Sheehan was as invigorated by the priest’s words as he was by the clear weather, and he looked forward to his next stop on this beautiful day.
The pub.
If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit that his Sunday ritual of going to the Yellow Heifer for a daytime pint and a bowl of fisherman’s pie did almost as much to rouse him from bed on the Lord’s day as did Father Sean’s blessings.
He walked with his hands in his pockets through the hillside cemetery that surrounded the church; he passed the valiant dead of wars gone by, both foreign and domestic, both long ago and more recent, and he paid his respects to all without slowing his gait.
His Irish flat cap formed a shadow across his heavy brow and intense green eyes, but the exposed skin above his reddish-brown beard was like leather.
From the neck up he could have passed for much older than his forty-seven years, but he moved nimbly, his pace vigorous; his body, though short and mostly hidden beneath his heavy coat, gave the immediate impression of physicality.
The skin on his face had been weathered by the years, beaten by the elements, but the rest of him moved as if he could handle himself.
He was a blue-collar man, and anyone who looked at him would be able to tell, but no one really looked his way.
Jon Jo installed and maintained security cameras, was a highly sought-after locksmith, and even tended to his own small flock of sheep on his tiny farm, and he felt like he’d met most of the inhabitants of this small hamlet, and those he hadn’t met through his profession, he’d likely seen at church or in one of the pubs.
He was known to all here in Camlough, but he was a close friend to none. Jon Jo kept his distance from people.
After a ten-minute stroll, he stepped through the doors of the Yellow Heifer. A bustling crowd waited for tables both outside and in, but he found a single seat at the end of the bar and took it, positioning his back to the wall.
A woman behind the bar looked up from drawing a Guinness and asked him if he’d like the usual, and Jon Jo gave a friendly nod.
His Guinness came first. He waited a few minutes before taking a sip; the pub filled even more, and his eyes flitted around from time to time.
He had a phone in his pocket but he ignored it; the pregame coverage of this afternoon’s English Premier match between Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest was playing on the television, but he only caught occasional glances at it as he looked around, people-watching, as was his way.
An older couple from church gave him a subdued wave from their table in the dining room past the bar, and he acknowledged them with a nod and a smile.
A young African man who worked at the feed store where Jon Jo bought the grain he fed his sheep was deep in conversation with a woman who must have been his wife at a table in the middle of the room.
Farther down the little bar he clocked a couple of strangers. Men in their fifties. Camlough didn’t get much tourist activity, so he found them interesting, but after a couple of minutes they paid and left, and he put them out of his mind.
His fisherman’s pie came soon after; thick chunks of fish and vegetables in a creamy sauce, covered in mashed potatoes and baked in the oven.
As he ate, the friendly but harried female bartender asked him if he’d like another stout, but he instead ordered a Cidona, an apple-flavored carbonated soft drink.
—
After lunch, he stopped at a farmer’s market, bought some jams and butters and soda bread and a couple of bottles of milk from a dairy farm nearby, and now he carried all his purchases in a pair of cloth bags he’d brought from home.
He left the hamlet behind, and the homes on either side of the lane grew farther and farther apart.
He passed a rolling patchwork quilt of farms: barns and outbuildings made of stone that had stood the test of time for centuries.
The pastoral land browned as winter closed in on County Armagh, but Jon Jo still found the view to be magnificent.
Chapel Road rose, then meandered to the north, and he climbed it, the exertion along with the sun working together to keep his body just warm enough, though a stronger wind blew than the one he’d encountered on his walk to church a few hours earlier.
And then, at two p.m., he turned up a pea gravel drive in front of a simple white stone cottage set back fifty meters from the lane, just one property from the road’s dead end. Last night’s rain showers had made puddles in the drive; he walked around them, careful not to muddy his shoes.
This was Jon Jo’s farm: four hectares, ten acres, just over half of it pasture, the other half woods.
A fenced rustic sheep pen lay forty meters off to the left; a dozen Scottish Blackface, their wool halfway in its growth stage, stood still as stones, watching their owner approach.
To the right was a utility shed, a broken-down 1975 Land Rover up on blocks alongside it, and directly to the right of the cottage sat a Ford Ranger pickup, black, mud-caked. Stenciled on the side, just legible behind the splatter, it read:
J. J. Sheehan, Security Systems and Locksmith
This, along with a local phone number.
Jon Jo stepped off the driveway with his two cloth bags full of market goods; he climbed three steps to the door, his legs barely noticing the six miles he’d walked today, his arms barely aware of the ten kilos he’d lugged nearly half that distance.
When his groceries were dealt with, he put the kettle on, started a fire in his fireplace to warm his three-room cottage, then changed into heavy rubber boots and exchanged his Irish cap for a knit beanie.
He had some chores around the cottage he needed to tend to, so he stepped back outside to the yard, headed over to his truck, and immediately noticed that the wind had picked up even more.
He zipped his coat up all the way and watched his sheep watching him, waiting to get fed.
Jon Jo had just opened the tailgate of the Ranger to get out one of his tool bags when he noticed movement over his left shoulder. A silver two-door Peugeot was just coming over the rise, sun reflecting off its windshield, and this drew his attention.
He did not recognize the car. He recognized virtually every vehicle that came down here towards the dead end.
It appeared that perhaps the driver was searching for an address. Jon Jo let go of his tool bag and rose back up, his eyes tracking the Peugeot as it neared.
The car was a beater, fifteen years old or so. There was body damage on the left rear quarter panel. The engine ran rough; he could hear it from one hundred meters away.
No one was looking at Jon Jo Sheehan at the moment, but if they had been, and if they possessed the training to discern such things, they would have detected a change in the man.
In contrast to the solo churchgoer, the lonely man in the pub enjoying his meal, the pleasant solitary pedestrian moving through the market on the autumn Sunday, the man who stood on the drive just steps from the door of the stone cottage now appeared intimidating somehow: his fingers opened and closed, his shoulders came back, his eyes did not blink as they followed the unfamiliar vehicle rolling silently closer.
His breathing slowed; his jaw tightened.
The silver Peugeot arrived at the mouth of the driveway, and then it passed by; a skillful observer might have noticed Jon Jo’s shoulders coming down a fraction of an inch, the creases around his eyes relaxing, but only for an instant, because when the car came to a stop, when the transmission clanked into reverse, the shoulders flexed again, the eyes narrowed into slits, and Jon Jo Sheehan moved for the first time.
Just a single side step closer to the front door of his home, but the movement was graceful, skilled, like a ballet dancer gliding into first position in anticipation of the opening notes of the symphony.
The Peugeot reversed a few meters, shifted into drive again, then turned into Jon Jo’s driveway and began rolling slowly forward through puddles in the gravel.
Jon Jo took two more fluid sidesteps, and now he stood at the front step of his porch.
The car came to a stop two thirds up the drive, now just fifteen meters or so from where he stood.
The man in the tweed suit and the knit beanie had not averted his gaze since the Peugeot came into view.
He sensed danger, foreboding.
The hard cold wind blew into his eyes, but he ignored it.
There were forces in this world more threatening than the wind, pains deeper than dry eyes, and he knew how to prioritize.
When whatever danger he sensed presented itself, he told himself he merely had to choose the best course of action, and then he would deal with it.
The car door cracked open; Jon Jo was ready to move, either back into the home on his right, behind the grille of the Ranger to his left, or directly at whoever emerged from the car.
But a woman climbed out from behind the wheel; she was small, she seemed to be alone, and immediately her long reddish-brown hair began blowing violently in the swirling wind.
She’d seen him already; this was clear, because her eyes were locked on his, even at this distance, and she took a few steps his way.
She wore a thick green anorak with dark jeans, gray boots. The coat was open; a silver cross around her neck sparkled in the sun over her black sweater.
Immediately Jon Jo’s head cocked; he recognized the young woman, and he smiled.
It was Deirdre.
His daughter-in-law.
He had not laid eyes on her for over two years.
Quickly he looked to the Peugeot; he expected to see his son climb out of the passenger side.
When he did not, he turned back to her.
Her eyes boiled with intensity. Her face was hard.
He saw unreserved hatred.
His smile faded.
And then, in another instant, somehow, he understood.
Jon Jo fixed his jaw tight but still found a way to speak through it. “Somethin’s ’appened to Charlie.”
She did not answer for a moment, did not move her body, did not soften her eyes.
Her hair whipped in the wind for several seconds, and then, finally, she spoke one word.
“Aye.”