Free Light of the Diddicoy by Eamon Loingsigh Page B

back in. When they make for moving it off the chairs the mother explodes, dives onto the top of it as it is lifted. The dead man’s sisters begin their chorus and the small children stop their running to stare upon the spectacle.
    â€œNah, nah, nah!” the mother keens and wails. “Nah, let’m stay here den! Not to take’m ’way from me! Not to! My bhoy, my bhoy! Nah . . .”
    Meehan reasons with her, though not expecting to persuade. He tries faintly to block her from the yellow pine and whispers.
    â€œOpen it up!” she cries. “I want to see him one last time . . .”
    Meehan whispers.
    â€œNot wert’ a shite to me, I wanna see’m. Don’ care how bad he looks. Haven’t seen me own bhoy’s face since they sent’m up in the stir six month ago. Open it up! Open!”
    â€œMa, please be . . .” the eldest daughter attempts.
    â€œNot!” She stamps and shrieks, leaving a stern and shaking silence. “Open it!”
    Placing it back on the chairs, a crowbar is summoned. Soon the sound of spliced nails being ripped from deep in the pine rings slices through the parlor air and the gray glim of dancing dust by the window swirls around the mother’s face and blue and red shining eyes.
    The head is dented on one side, the darkened hair matted with a dried fluid, eyes swollen but shut. The shock of death still painted on the face though the crust of blood has been wiped away. Silently the mother bends. The eldest daughter holding the back of her sack dress so as not to allow the breasts to show in the eye of men. She kisses the dead man, her only son. Kisses his swollen cheek and smells him. Smells him deep in her. To remember him. As the babe inside her twenty-three years ago. As the smell of hope as he toddled around the barren, one-room tenement as a child. As the smell of the household’s provider as a teenager running with the gangs.
    â€œHe t’ought of us first,” she said aloud, teeth clenched. “Became a man before his time. Found earnings the only way there is out there for it to be found.”
    She crosses herself as she rises. Immediately the men push forth with the lid and again she wails, pushes them back.
    â€œDinny Meehan.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œKnife.”
    Harry Reynolds hands Meehan a blade, who then comes to the side of the mother. The Swede bends down and pulls back the lifeless wrist. Vincent Maher holds a small broken-handled English tea cup below as Meehan slices. The blue vein opens to drip a mixture of coagulated redness into the cup. Filling it up to the top, it is handed to the mother whereupon she drinks a proud swig, then closes her eyes and tears under the gray shine from the window, over her son. She then hands it to Dinny Meehan. “Drink fer your bhoys. Fer me son’s strength.”
    Dinny Meehan offers his palm for her to place the handleless cup and gulps down the rest with a slow toss of his head. The mother watches his face to see if he will grimace. He does not. Dinny comes again to the side of the mother and places one hand on the back of her wrist, his other hand draped over her shoulder and whispers. She nods and leans into him, then Dinny nods toward Cinders Connolly and Maher and they begin to untie the boots from the dead man and pull them off carefully. The lid is then dropped and the men line up the nails, passing the hammer around to punch them back in place. The mother falls to her knees as it is lifted away. She bows her head among the empty chairs, takes a deep breath, and sings a song never sung before. A melody made by a mother. Then it evaporates in the dusty air.
    Soon enough all the men are gathered in the dank stairwell with the coffin pointed downward. It too has no handles and takes five men to negotiate the angles in the thin, steep steps. Outside a priest appears by the morgue dray, Father Larkin from St. Ann’s.
    â€œI t’ought t’was 2 p.m.