Chapter 1 :: Page 7

remarried. She didn't have any children.
   Her story was like many stories and the stories together then had no endings to them because they just began new stories. These stories were passed over and down all the time, little stories that meant nothing except to those that lived or saw them. I knew Mrs. O’Malley and McMill had a story, but I wasn't really sure what they were. I imagined them. Was there even anything to tell about him except the thick wrinkles on his face, the tufts of gray beard and hair that spilled over to his tattered green coat? His eyes were dark and rough and he was appreciative of a hand. He sat all day or night and I didn't know where he went he wasn't there but he was always with me. I could see him. It was hard to make sense of their narratives because words had their own life and if you couldn’t be completely exact in every way, then you told something different and the story was lost. What was thought to be gained became something else entirely.
   Oftentimes, memory was just a blank sheet with impressions left from someone else's story. I thought if I wrote them down, then they would be real when I went back later and read them, read what was real and what had happened at that moment. I was thinking of the notes scattered on my bed written by an old woman who had been young once.
   I liked magic places and heroic figures. There were few things better than a tale of magic and heroism. Each action determined by destiny, the cause and the effect of movement building to an apocalyptic and heroic deed. The plot was evident. To waver in the least in a tale such as this and meaning was lost.

* * *

   I settled into my sheets and pulled my comforter over my naked chest. I hadn’t done much during the day. Tomorrow I would start in Dublin. The air came cool through the window. I could hear a car stop in front of the house then start again, then a door from down the hallway opened and closed. The houses were still, rows of them down the street. Between them, the view of the water, and some boys running after a ball, too far away to hear their shouts.

Oh, how ya do Private Willie McBride
Do ya mind if I lay down my yer graveside?

Jack Kinley played his music and you could hear him cry, too. He was an old man now, but he remembered the days of early rebellion and the stories of his dying father at the hands of the Black and Tans his mother used to tell him. It did a turn to a person year after year to hear the stories like that. Jackie was a good person. He lived next door to Mrs. O'Malley and he played his music late in the evening and in the mornings at least until the first sounds of working people bustling to the DART on the bay side were heard.
   I closed the window a bit. I couldn't ever sleep when Kinley sang. He

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