The Dead Yard (33 page)

"I want you," she whispers in a tiny, shy, almost nonexistent voice. And she lets go of my
hand, takes off her shoes and her dress, and stands there naked. Her pale body and small breasts,
her long legs and dark eyes and hair. She is so beautiful that she robs me of my breath. My pulse
pounding in my ears.

She helps me take off my trousers and my boots. And she hooks herself under my outstretched,
handcuffed arms, and she pulls me close and kisses me.

We lie on the forest floor and she arcs her torso over mine, my arms round her back and
leading her. Touching her spine and buttocks and the back of her hair. Clement and meek, the both
of us. Like it’s our first time. She gives herself and I ease her to the leafy ground and grasp
her tighter, touching her with my lips. I kiss her on the shoulders and the faint, scared smile
on her face. And she rolls me back to the forest floor and stretches out her body on me, kissing
me, breathing words that are careful and true.

"I feel the same way, Sean, from that night, from the journey in the car, I couldn’t help it,
I can’t help it…."

And she tells me more. "This, this is my first, my first time."

It shocks me. Incredible, in this day and age, that she has waited, saved herself, for the
right moment and the right man. And it proves that a lot of her character was bravado and an act
and it shows me that she thinks she’s found that man at last.

And gently, very gently, I climb on top of her and I can see that this is the way it’s
supposed to be. That this is what it’s been like for everyone else. Not hard or frantic or
desperate. But like this. Geometries of movement and belonging, a giving of each other for each
other. We maneuver our limbs and she puts me inside her and I can feel her pulse, a hasp of
beating.

"Sean, I know it’s strange, but I—"

"Ssshhhhh…"

I push, and for her it’s an awakening. A revelation. And no less for me, too. And I fall in
those blue eyes and the shadows of thoughts on her face. Things that I couldn’t read but now I
can.

"Hold me. Hold me tighter," she says.

"I am."

"Hold me. Hold me and never let me—"

"I won’t," I say and hook my handcuffed arms about her back.

We make love under the trees like a human and his elven enchantress. Or is it the other way
around, that I am the woodland spirit and she is the lost mortal girl entering the dark part of
the fairy tale?

We make love and she cries and I talk to her and hug her.

And the moment is beautiful and complete and in the present tense there is no future, there is
only her pulsing heart and her skin and the look of completeness on her soft lips and sylvan
eyes.

It’s perfect. But I’ve seen this movie before. It’s the scene in the book of Genesis before
the storm.

I hold her and we make love again, in the near absolute dark of the forest, without a noise or
an interruption. A fragile promise of me and her. The calm before the hurricane.

The woods were wild and thick and the regions between the trees were pierced by sunlight
through the canopy.

The red men had taught them to tap the bark for syrup and showed them berries and the
nests of bees. Drunk on sweetness, they forged between huge firs and giant elms and trees of no
description yet known to civilized man.

They had seen nothing but forest since coming off the fish-swarmed shore and it was to the
forest gods that the local people prayed. Fintan was here and Daana, too, and in the glades they
felt the heathen presence of age-old Pan. They came sometimes upon an altar or mound or other
pagan edifice, yet they were not afraid, for the knowledge of the One God sustained
them.

They crossed a river of leaping salmon. They listened to wolves and spotted eagles and
even vultures
—
a bird no monk but one from Italy had seen before.

They rang the angelus for the first time in the breadth of river valleys and laid a
monument to Patrick of humble stone, humbled yet under a huge mountain. Life was so much here.
Beautiful and abundant and brimming over. Sprouting forth upon all dimensions and angles. The
priest from Alba mentioned the Gnostic heresy and ventured that here the world was untouched by
evil or the Fall. But Brendan was quick with him and made him do penance of sacking and
chastisement. He knew in his heart that beauty was a corrupter, that the monks were being seduced
by the very earth itself….

I woke.

Kit was looking at me. She was fully dressed.

"You were dreaming," she whispered.

"How could you tell?"

"Rapid eye movement," she said, smiling.

"What time is it?" I asked, wiping the leaves off my back, shivering.

"It’s nearly twelve o’clock, lunchtime."

"Won’t Touched be going crazy?"

"No. I walked back to where I could see the house and waved to him. And he said: ’Where the
fuck is Sean?’"

"And what did you say?"

"I shouted to him that you had a toilet emergency and were going to the bathroom," she replied
with a wee laugh.

"What did he say to that?"

"He didn’t seem that fussed; Dad and him were having a discussion about something but he told
me to hurry you up."

"Yeah, but even so, Kit, you should have woken me," I said.

"You never wake a sleeping baby. And besides I had to do what I always do with Touched."

"And what’s that?"

"Ignore him."

I rubbed my eyes, sat on the log, and pulled on my boxers and trousers. I fitted my prosthesis
and with some difficulty tied my boots while she watched with fascination. If she was still in
the business of comparing me with Jackie, this was a mark for him.

I caught her looking at me. She blushed and turned away. But then again maybe the time for
comparisons was over. Jackie was an irrelevancy now. Things had progressed from that pissing
contest to a matter of life and death.

I brushed the leaves and pine needles off my T-shirt and sat on the fallen tree and stared at
her until her smile fixed and she saw that I wanted to say something.

"What?" she asked.

"Kit. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. We don’t have much time. And we might not get another
chance to talk. I want you to sit down on the tree next to me and listen to what I have to say.
You’ve got to listen to me very carefully," I said.

"You suddenly got very serious. While I am walking on air," she said, mocking herself in a
silly, preppy accent.

"I’m not joking. Take a seat."

She frowned, but sat.

"Ok, say your speech," she demanded.

"They’re going to have to kill Peter tomorrow. The Brits will not cave to Touched’s demands.
There is a long-standing policy about negotiating with terrorists. Neither the Brits nor the
Americans are allowed to do it. They never give in to kidnappers, ever. It’s a standing order," I
said slowly and carefully.

"Reagan did it," Kit said.

I shook my head.

"That was a crazy one-off illegal scheme conducted by a rogue colonel. The British and
American governments never make deals for hostages. Peter is not going to be exchanged for
anyone. It’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release the Newark Three. I promise you
that. What do you think is going to happen after that? I’ll tell you. With his credibility on the
line, Touched is going to have to kill Peter and you are going to be complicit in that boy’s
murder."

"You, too," she said.

"Me, too. All of us. For as sure as I am standing here, Touched is going to murder him."

Kit shuddered. "I don’t think he’d really go through with it, it’s more a sort of a bluff,
like in poker."

"Touched has killed many people. Murdered many people. You know that woman who ran the All
Things Brit shop? Touched killed her the night before we came up here. That’s the cleanup Jackie
was talking about. Touched raped her, tortured her, and then he slit her open from her vagina to
her throat and he watched while she gasped for breath and bled to death."

All the levity had vanished from her expression now. I had gotten her attention.

I let it sink in and then continued.

"Touched is a sociopath. He’d kill you, me, anyone who gets in his way. He’s a lunatic. If you
don’t believe me about the woman, ask Jackie. He was there, he saw what Touched did. He threw up
when he saw it. Touched tortured her and it took her hours to die. And that kid is going to get
the same fate. How old do you think he is, twenty, nineteen? And what was his crime?
Nothing."

"They said they chased her out of town," Kit muttered, the words sounding ridiculous even to
her.

"Chased her out of town? Are you joking? You don’t believe that. You’re cleverer than that.
Chased her out of town? Is this a Western? You didn’t believe it when they said that and you
don’t believe it now. Touched killed her. And Gerry and Jackie and I threw her body in the back
of the van, dug a hole in the salt pan on Plum Island, and buried her. Buried what was left of
her."

Kit looked stunned. She must have known some of this, perhaps most of it, but she’d been
hiding it from herself. In denial about her father’s business, about its ugly side. All she
wanted to do was live in that big house and surf and spin romantic yarns about Ireland. Wear the
green and sing rebel songs and hero-worship her freedom fighter and his old comrade-in-arms
Touched McGuigan. But she knew. She wasn’t stupid. She was wavering, there were tears in her eyes
again, this time certainly not tears of joy.

"The British woman wasn’t the first, not by a long shot; Touched told us that he killed a
woman last year that he’d been having problems with. He said that in front of Jackie and your da,
if you want to check that out too. Believe me, Kit, when this goes wrong, which it will, Touched
is going to torture and kill Peter, who looks as if he’s a goddamn hippie who never did any
sentient creature any harm in his whole bloody life."

Kit wiped away her tears and looked at me imperiously.

"My dad won’t let him kill that boy," she said.

"He let him kill that woman."

"She was an FBI agent."

"That’s what Touched says. You talked to her. Did she seem like an agent to you? And so what
the fuck if she was? Did she deserve that? Rape and torture and death?"

She shook her head.

"What are you saying, exactly, Sean?" Kit asked warily.

I took her hand and looked her right in the watery baby blues.

"We can stop this, Kit, you and me, we can stop it," I said.

"How?"

"You’ve got to make some excuse and drive into Belfast and call the FBI. They’ll come and
they’ll arrest all of us and, Jesus, we’ll do time for kidnap, but at least it won’t be murder,
and that poor lad will go free," I said.

"Why do I have to do it? Why do I have to betray everybody?" she asked. Indignant that the act
would fall to her, but not, it seemed, outraged by the act itself.

"I can’t do it, how could I, like this," I explained.

"Yes, you could, you could run away right now. I could say you hit me and knocked me down and
you could run. You could get to the outskirts of Belfast in a couple of hours and I wouldn’t have
to tell on anyone."

"Kit. Look at me. Don’t be ridiculous, with these bloody cuffs on and a prosthetic foot I
wouldn’t get a quarter of a mile, Touched and Jackie would find me and kill me."

Kit let go of my hand and stood up.

"We better be getting back now," she said coolly.

In that coolness was ambivalence and ultimately death. I hadn’t closed yet and I was running
out of time.

"Haven’t you been listening? Only you can save his life. Tell them you want to get supplies,
take Sonia’s car and drive into Belfast, go to the police station and tell them to contact the
FBI."

She turned her back to me so I couldn’t see her face and her emotions. Her shoulders were
shaking in big sobs. I remained quiet. Letting it all sink in.

She wiped her face, looked at me.

"Even if I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t; the FBI would come here and they’d kill us all like
they did with Waco. I wouldn’t be saving anybody’s life. We’d all fucking die," Kit said.

"No, you wouldn’t, you’d be ok, we’d all be ok."

"My dad would go to prison and I’d go to prison," she said, tears rolling down those white
rose-hip cheeks.

"You wouldn’t go to prison. You wouldn’t serve a day. I promise you that, Kit. And your dad
would get a deal too. Touched is the one they want," I insisted.

"How do you know? How can you promise anything?"

I stood up and put my arms around her.

It had to be the truth.

The truth would show her that it wasn’t bullshit. That although I had deceived them all, I
wasn’t lying about my feelings for her. The truth would be a clear light illuminating the way out
of this quagmire, this goddamn nightmare.

The truth would free me and her from the history that was weighing us down, breaking us,
sinking us.

And besides, she’d already proven to me that she could keep a secret. She hadn’t told them
that I’d been in the British Army, not even when Touched said I was on probation or when we’d
gone to the
Elizabeth
to get a general from that army. She’d already joined me in the
conspiracy against him. She was flaky, she was young, but she was loyal to her own system of
morality. I was asking her to do a betrayal but it was for the right reasons and with the best of
intentions. And I could tell she hated Touched. If I handled this right, it wouldn’t be me versus
Gerry. It would be me versus Touched, and that contest I could easily win.

Especially this way. This would be the trump card, me putting my life in her lap. This would
push her over the abyss.

I backed away, put my hand under her chin, and tilted it up to face me.

"Kit, I promise you, the authorities will be lenient with you and your dad. I personally will
see to it."