In the Galway Silence

There are times I stand on the Salmon Weir Bridge and just stare at the salmon leaping. Not that they do much leaping since the water was poisoned. But if you focus, seriously concentrate, you may, in your ideal vision, see a massive brown-red specimen jump absolutely clear of the water, and then, with a fine lunge, clear the very weir.

That delights me to my core.

A tinker woman once told me,

“Free your mind of the narrow world amac [son], let the wild entrance you with a magic that is not of this space.”

Times I could, others I let Jameson do an artificial version, neither endured but briefly. Alongside the river are wooden seats, relatively free of graffiti and vandalism. A woman sat there, staring intently at me. I did what you do.

I stared back.

She summoned me.

I sighed, muttered,

“What fresh hell awaits me now?”

I wasn’t far off the mark as it turned out.

As I approached, I could see she was in her mid-fifties, petite, with a very elegant coat that didn’t quite disguise that here was a person who had recently emerged from major trauma, the stain of tragedy large in her eyes. She might be moving away from whatever it was but she certainly wasn’t recovered.

I know this from bitter experience.

From such events you can put distance but, really, that’s all it will be.

Distance.

She said,

“Mr. Taylor.”

Patted the seat beside her.

Something in the gesture implied gentleness. Of course, it might be just an empty gesture. I sat.

She gave me a look of deep sorrow.

Up close, you could see she’d been a looker in her day but life had beaten the hell out of her. She said,

“I’m Loren Renaud.”

Oh, fuck, Pierre Renaud’s wife, mother of the murdered twins, and now a dead husband. The fact wasn’t that she seemed beaten but that she was still functioning on any level. What did I say?

“Sorry your old man killed the kids”?

I tried,

“I am so sorry for all your...”

Fuck, pause.

“Grief.”

She made a small sound not unlike an involuntary laugh, said,

“It seems too much for one family, n’est-ce pas?”

Of course, she was bound to have absorbed French. I asked,

“You wanted to talk to me?”

Long silence, then,

“You are yourself pursued by ghosts, I think.”

Indeed.

I said,

“Most days I outrun them, not by much but enough to keep going.”

She said,

“Une chambre sans meubles.”

Explained,

“My mother used to say grief is like a bedroom stripped of all furniture.”

She asked,

“Would you have a cigarette?”

Now that I could handle.

Her hand shook as she took the cig. She said,

“You should have seen me a week ago.”

I liked her, the bald honesty of the admission. It was simply heartbreaking.

I said,

“Been there, even my voice shook.”

And she hesitated, then laughed, echoed,

“Your voice?”

“Yeah, imagine how fucked you have to be for that.”

She didn’t have to imagine as she still had some occupancy of that dark borough. I said,

“It is a wonder you are here at all.”

And could have bitten my tongue.

She nodded, said,

“I was in a haze of booze and pills for a long time and only one thing pulled me back.”

I didn’t ask, waited.

She said,

“Cross my heart, I didn’t know Pierre killed his...”

Pause.

“Our sons. Until the animal told me.”

I had a fair idea who that was but, again, waited.

“Michael Allen. In the beginning, he was all charm and Pierre, he was in awe of him, gave him money for that ludicrous vendetta, Two for Justice, as if Allen cared a toss for that.”

She gave a deep sigh, reliving many nightmares, then,

“When Pierre died, I really believed it was suicide until Allen laid out the whole shocking series of events. He told me he’d need to keep the cottage Pierre had let him use and that he would be...”

Deep breath.

“Requiring funds from time to time.”

She gave me a look of utter outrage, said,

“In effect, I’m to support the man who destroyed my whole family.”

She shook her head at the sheer horror of that.

Crunch time. I asked,

“Why have you come to me?”

She said,

“You have to stop him.”

Right.