The Loyalty Bar-Part 1

Wherein my night goes all to bags.

Photo by Jim Cummings

“A friend’s eye is a good Mirror.” —Old Irish saying

The full name of the place is O’Mara’s Loyalty Bar, loyalty having had something to do with allegiance to the crown one hundred and thirty years ago but that scenario has played out for the better and all has been forgiven and forgotten. Well, if the truth be told, perhaps forgiven but surely unwise to forget. However, in the event you wish anything further to do with all that, there’s a place up north where they still hang portraits of the dearly departed queen on their kitchen walls and I hear they accept visitors. (Nothing against the old gal but… it’s complicated as they say here.)

The O’Maras’ have been gone for a couple of decades. Liam Collins now owns the place and he runs a tight ship. No football colors allowed, no TV’s on the walls and no loud or boorish behavior. If you come in effin’ and blinkin’, he’ll invite you to leave and try your luck down the road at Mulligan’s, where they seem to encourage that sort of thing. On Saturday afternoons, Collins will have a Trad band playing from the corner booth near the window and if the wives will come, we’ll give them a twirl and hope that they might be in a certain mood when we get home later.

But this is not a story about a pub outside of Killarney. If I figure out what it’s about as I go along telling it, I’ll be sure to let you know. But if I must start somewhere, a pub named Loyalty is as good a place as any. And as they say, a good start is half the work.

Thursday is darts night and I was just ducking-in for a quick pint on the way home for dinner and a change of clothes before coming back for league play. Murphy and Brennan were already at the bar and they waved me over urgently the moment they saw me.

“We’ve been trying you all afternoon, Willie,” said Murphy. “Haven’t you noticed the missed calls?”

Collins put my usual on the bar and I picked it up and had a draw on it. “I’ve been leaving the fecking phone at home,” I said. “I’m starting to suspect that all that radiation in my pocket is doing my manly bits no good, if you know what I mean. Besides, I can never hear the thing over the noise of the shop. What is it you’re on about anyway?”

Brennan seemed as if he had a remark to make but he thought better of it when I gave him a look.

“Bad news, Willie,” said Murphy, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to forfeit the semi-finals tonight. O’Brien can’t make it.”

I must have looked like a fish out of water, my mouth trying to form words that my brain hadn’t yet organized. “What? No!,” I said. We haven’t made the semi’s in years and we’ve all been throwin bang-on. Sixteen teams down to four. I’m not about to pass this up.” I was on the verge of losing my composure.

Murphy reached to lay a hand on my shoulder but I took a half step back.

“Where is the Dosser? I’ll go and drag him down here by the short hairs.”

“Willie,” he said, “Finnegan collapsed and died today.”

I stood there in silence, looking up into my head, rummaging through the messy files within but couldn’t come up with anything.

“Well that sounds right tragic, Murphy,” I said. “Now would you mind tellin me who the feck is Finnegan?”

Murphy looked up to the ceiling and swiveled back to the bar.

Brennan said, “Finnegan was O’Brien’s horse, the one that pulled his jaunting car. He keeled-over halfway ‘round the park this morning with two American couples aboard. They were all horrified as I heard it. Sure and who wouldn’t be?”

I knew the horse, black and shiny with a long mane that veiled his eyes. I’d just never known his name or even that he’d had one. Brennan seemed near to soppy so I adopted a compassionate approach. “That’s a damned shame,” I said as I raised my glass. “Here’s to a good and loyal horse named Finnegan. And to Seamus O’Brien, his kind and faithful caretaker. But it’s only half five and surely O’Brien can be here by eight.”

Murphy wheeled-around on his stool. “The man is heartbroken, Willie,” he said. “Can you not find some pity for him? Or is your heart too hard for that sort of thing.”

Now, I don’t consider myself hard hearted but the remark didn’t come as a shock either. I’m not known to wear my heart on my sleeve and I don’t suffer those who do for very long. We’ve all got our crosses to bear. Oh, I understand the pain of loss, maybe better than most. On any given day I can walk out the back door and up the hill to visit the graves of them all. My father is there. In life, he was the biggest man in town—literally and figuratively. A man of imposing stature and gentle voice, he was often called upon to help people sort things out by lending a hand, an ear or wise advice. Since his death, his role seems to have fallen to me, although I must admit, I don’t bring the same patience to the job. My dear mother is there beside him. My aunt Margaret, my grandparents on my father’s side. A great-great grandfather, alive for forty-six years and already gone more than ninety. I’m closing in on forty-five myself and it’s a fact not lost on me that very few men of the Lynch family are remembered as doddering codgers.

There are more up there, not the least of them our one and only child, a boy we named Timothy who entered this world prematurely and struggled mightily for twenty-two days before exhausting his resources and those of the medical professionals.

A family cemetery provides a perspective on our short time here and the long time gone, and the cold comfort of knowing exactly where you’ll be planted when your time comes around. If someday you notice me missing and wonder what became of old Willie Lynch, you’ll at least know where to come looking. Aside from mowing around the headstones once or twice in summer, I don’t go up there.

But, just as this is not a story about a pub outside of Killarney, neither is it a story about a family cemetery. Rest assured however, I feel like I’ll be getting to the point here pretty soon. It is a story about many things and it’s a little too soon to tie a bow around it.

“Well, what became of the horse then?” I asked Brennan.

“He’s back at O’Brien’s place. Murphy and I brought his trailer over and public works sent two machines to hoist him. It was a dreadful sight. People were upset just watching.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can imagine it to be quite upsetting, especially to women and small children.”

“Yes,” said Brennan. “Women and children especially.”

Murphy shot me a glare.

“So tell me, boys,” I said. “On the ride back, did you three have a chance to devise a plan for the disposal of the remains of dear Finnegan?”

Murphy reached around to the bar and turned up with a pint which he handed to me. “We told O’Brien we’d have you bring over your backhoe,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I was just thinking the same. As a matter of fact, you can call O’Brien right now and tell him that I’ll be there first thing in the morning to give old Finnegan a proper burial. And while you have him on the phone, tell him to get his sorry arse down here and be sure to have his game face on.”

The two of them looked at each other, their eyes locked in battle, their heads making little twitches toward me. Brennan apparently lost the fight. “I’m afraid it can’t wait, Willie,” he said. “Imagine how upsetting it is to see him laid out like that, right outside the kitchen window. He was already starting to bloat when we left there an hour ago. Maureen was beside herself.”

I could see that no amount of protest would have any effect on the eventual outcome. The tournament was lost, the night a holy shit show. Now, it was just a matter of reminding myself that he who keeps his tongue keeps his friends. I told them to meet me at my place in a half hour.

And so, after tipping two jerry cans of diesel into the JCB and bouncing along the lane, down the hill and through the washed out corner at the bottom, then up the turnoff to O’Brien’s place with Murphy and Brennan clinging, each to a side and shouting unhelpful driving advice, we came (rather too boisterously, in retrospect) onto the solemn scene of Seamus O’Brien and his lifeless black pony.

Thank you for reading The Loyalty Bar-Part 1.

I am always eager to read your comments.

Part 2 will be coming soon. (Wherin a large hole is dug)