Letting Rip

This story won first prize in the James Plunkett Short Story competition of 2004, organised through the Irish Writers' Union.

It wasn't the way I'd wanted to travel. Not like that. Not stuck in the back of my brother Eugene's state-of-the-art whatsit with its satellite navigation and its quadrophonic sound system permanently tuned in to some wailing country-and western station. Certainly not squashed in among his three lardy children, pinched and dribbled and guzzled and roared all the way down the country.

I'd said I'd get a bus, but my brother, Eugene, wasn't having it. The way he put it, he wanted to save me inconvenience, but I reckon he thought it would look bad if I didn't go down with them. People might talk. To be more precise, they might talk even more than they already did. God knows the nudgers and begrudgers already had plenty of  ammunition against our side of the family: what with dad suddenly upping and running off like that with his childhood sweetheart -- an older woman by God seventy-three if she's a day, with a face like a boiled turnip. And mam so far away with the fairies, she was refusing point blank to attend the funeral of her only brother, claiming she'd never even had a brother. I might have mentioned, too, the scandalous revelations of Eugene's financial shenanigans sprinkled all over the papers on an almost daily basis, if it wasn't for the sad fact that this actually enhanced his reputation in the village, "You boyo, you!" being the standard reaction, accompanied by a wink. As for our other brother, or should I now say sister, he/she was currently in Morocco awaiting that final cutting-edge operation. And me, well just to look at me you'd know there was something fishy going on, if only anyone could ever find out what  it was.

My brother Eugene never liked to be at more of a disadvantage than necessary so he  had phoned me to explain in his special patient voice how remote the village was and so on. As if I didn't remember the way we used to struggle down all those years laden with our summer gear, to be picked up off the bus by Uncle Dinny in his van; mam in her shiny electric blue dress sitting up front with him, us shoved in the back, bumping for dark ages to the farm. Stinky old thing it was, that van. Carried calves and piglets other times. Stinky old man, too, Dinny was, even then. Stinky and scary. Eyes like broken glass. Hands crusted with scabs. Filthy fingers you'd be afraid might  touch you. Although he must have done something right. All the way down the country my brother Eugene kept telling Eileen how it turned out Dinny was worth a small fortune, a cool half-million, when he died.

"Minded the pennies, d'you see."

Right enough, there was never any state-of-the art whatsit for Dinny. The old van served him till the end.  Lived in the same primitive hovel all his life with no fancy gadgets, Aunty Kat doing all the washing by hand, pushing it after through an iron wringer.

It would be part of the fun of the funeral, my brother Eugene said, to see who might get the goods. (In the event, he himself inherited the gold cufflinks, the one that dissolved in acid when he tested them.  He shouldn't have complained: cufflinks were more than I got.) But I knew what he was really thinking: an opportunity missed.

How he should maybe have sent Eileen and the kids down once in a while to charm the old man into a legacy. But with Celine's whiny voice in my ear, Natasha's elbow stabbing into my eye, and Shane's spit on my knee, I reckoned my brother stood more of a chance the way things were.

"One step at a time..." sang Gloria from the radio.

"I can't breath," I said.  It was true.  My brother Eugene's state-of-the-art air- conditioning didn't seem to be working and Celine ponged.  The inimitable stink of pubescence.

" Damn, " my brother said.  "Now the windows won't open."

Panic set in among the lardy kids.

"We're trapped," Celine screamed, thrashing thick bare thighs.  "We're all going to sufflicate."

Then Shane started to howl while Natasha flailed at the windows.

"Here," my brother Eugene said, tipping a tray of fuses into Eileen's lap.  "See what one works, for God Almighty's sake."

"They're all different."

"Course they are." He had put on his how stupid-can-you-get voice.  "They're colour differentiated... by function and power."

"So what colour is the fuse for the windows, then?"

"God give me strength," said my brother Eugene.

You have to understand, he was a bully and a prankster.  Always had been. A bully  who paradoxically still thought he deserved to be loved.  And while Eileen shrank  into herself, bowed and bended, my defence was to go sullen and await my  opportunity. Not seeing him much helped. They'd stopped inviting me over ever since I said I wouldn't babysit any more, not after the incident with the piss in the cough bottle. My brother Eugene claimed I had no sense of humour.

"Piss is good for you," he'd said, waving his fork.  "Film stars drink it."

Wonder if he'd have laughed so much if he'd found out that the curry I'd made for them, the one he was enjoying so much, was concocted from spiced-up doggy food.  That's what I mean by awaiting my opportunity.

Eileen was on the receiving end of the worst of my brother Eugene's bullying. But if you suppose that put me on her side, think again. Every woman for herself. And while I wasn't enjoying the ride down, I kept myself going by thinking how much money I was saving. How much time. Such things matter when you're strapped for both.

We reached the village without asphyxiating, and my brother Eugene ran a competition to see who would be first to spot the funeral home. He'd always liked competitions: "I spy with my little eye something beginning with R," changing the answer each time someone guessed right -- road: no; river: no; runny nose: no no no - because he always had to win. I saw the funeral home ages before anyone else but kept my gob shut. Actually, we almost drove by it and I had to give Natasha a hard dig in the ribs.

"There it is," she screeched.

"Good girl," my brother Eugene smiled.  "You win."

Then she wanted her prize immediately and started screaming because there wasn't one, only stopping when Eileen whispered in her ear.  A bribe or threat.

Uncle Dinny in his open box was all cleaned up and wearing a suit, the way I'd never seen him. My brother Eugene made a beeline for the widow.  Maybe he thought he could compensate for lost loot by shaking her energetically by the hand. I was surprised to observe her push him away with considerable force. He actually staggered. Meanwhile, Natasha, Shane and Celine, on cue, started howling with grief at the sight of the dear departed. Eileen tried to shush them and got Shane's snot on her skirt for her trouble.

Suddenly something struck me.

"Did Dinny get a divorce and marry again?"

"What divorce!" my brother Eugene yelled.  Everyone looked round.  "You mad or what? He was still raging at being pushed.

"Only that's never Aunty Kat, not unless it grew back."

Years before, our aunt had lost a foot in an unfortunate agricultural accident no one was allowed to talk about, and had been fitted with a shiny pink plastic one that had  fascinated us as kids.  We were forever hanging around to see if we could get a hold of it when she took it off at night.  Sad to say, we never succeeded.

My brother Eugene started staring so hard at the widow's leg that I thought he was going to get clocked all over again.

Then Eileen came up.

"The deceased is a Mr Patsy Galoogley.  That can't be right, can it?"

We hastily departed, my brother Eugene evidently still in some confusion.

"After all I did for that woman," he complained.

Natasha got a slap on the head for identifying the wrong funeral parlour, which just goes to show how wise I was not making a bid for the prize.

"It's at the bottom of the town, seemingly," Eileen said.

There was a long queue of people waiting to shake Aunty Kat's hand and, despite my brother Eugene's attempts to jump to the front, we were pushed outside in the rain to take our turn.

Celine started it: she said that if she didn't have a burger at once, she'd starve to death. Then the other two said they'd starve to death too, and screamed at the prospect of being cut off so young. I said that if they were planning to die, they were in the right place for it, which made them scream even more. People looked over at us and my brother Eugene commented that my remarks weren't exactly helping the situation.

But he was thoughtful as he said it.  He was obviously impressed with the turnout.

"People must have loved your man very much," Eileen remarked.

The short little fellow in front of us turned around at that and gave her a look to curdle milk. He had a scrunched-up face with dirt in the folds and a rats-tail hairpiece slapped on top of his baldy pate.

"Not at all," he said. "We're here to make sure he's well and truly dead."

That shut Eileen up. And the rest of us, too.

At last we got in out of the rain and shuffled over to Aunty Kat.  My brother Eugene checked her foot, just to be sure, but she knew him, well enough.

"Eugene Mara, be god, the living spit," she chuckled. "Dinny was always saying you'd inherit..." (my brother perked up at this) "the family conk."

True enough, my brother Eugene had always had a big nose, and now it was permanently in bloom, as a consequence of the brandy and port he employed as fertiliser on a daily basis.

Me, however, she couldn't place at first. Then she clapped her hands.  "Oh yes, I remember: Sulky!"

Near enough, I thought, wondering all the same what she had to be so happy about.

There was a daughter, too, a lumpy girl grown to a lumpy woman, who answered to the unlikely name of Crystal. The streak beside her was her husband, a creamery manager.

"Crystal married so well," mam used to say reproachfully.

For years I thought that was his name. So Well. Then I found it was even sillier. He was a Mr Ball. Crystal Ball.

By now, the little man in front of us had reached the coffin.  It was tight closed

"Here," he called to Aunty Kat.  "You sure he's in there?"

"Didn't I screw down the lid meself, Florrie."

"Then wo-hoo!" sang he, and before you could say "Biddie Mulligan", up he'd jumped on the coffin lid and, rats-tails flapping, proceeded to dance a jig.

It seemed we out-of-towners were the only ones gob-smacked. Even the priest tittered behind his hand and the undertaker went so far as to reach for his accordion and started to play The Irish Washerwoman. Next thing, everyone was jigging around. Eileen beat time on her thigh.

Suddenly three loud knocks sounded out, as if from the gates of hell.  Then three more.  Thud, thud, thud.

Everyone froze.  Florrie on the coffin stopped short, one leg cocked in the air.

"Tis coming from inside the box!" someone said and Florrie leapt to the ground as if scalded.

This was the moment my brother Eugene -- no better man -- took control of the proceedings. He stepped forward and banged on the lid with his fist.  Thud came the reply from inside.  Once more and Thud echoed back again.

"Open up," he instructed the undertaker in ominous tones.

"I'm afraid something fiendish has been perpetrated here," he added self righteously.

The undertaker eventually found his screwdriver and with shaking hands tried to loosen the lid. Impatiently my brother Eugene grabbed the implement.  At last – and no one had uttered a word during the entire proceedings -- he took a deep breath.

"Heave ho!" he said.

Some people leaned forward, more drew back. Aunty Kat alone sat placidly tapping her false foot as if she could still hear the melody of the accordion.

The lid was off.

"Holy God!" exclaimed my brother Eugene.

I peered in.Uncle Dinny, dirty in death as in life, lay there in his work clothes.A skinny mean-faced man with a blossoming nose. What got us all gasping, however, was that some class of a wooden stake had been plunged deep into his chest. It must have been the top end that had thudded against the lid of the coffin when Florrie danced and when my brother banged his fist on it.

Now everyone turned to Aunty Kat. She was still smiling her sweet smile.

"I had to make sure, d'you see. You all see that, don't you?"

Nods all round and muttered exclamations of agreement.

"R.I.P." added Aunty Kat piously.

"Amen," answered the mourners, some blessing themselves.

No one suggested removing the stake and the lid was tightly replaced.  The undertaker then put away his screwdriver and picked up his accordion, launching into The Rakes of Mallow. The wake resumed. My brother Eugene gloomily stated his intention of bringing his lardy children off to the chipper and was clearly taken aback when Eileen said that if I was staying on a bit, she wouldn't mind keeping me company.  He rubbed his red nose thoughtfully.

"OK, so," he said.

Two things amazed me that night.  First, how meekly my brother Eugene went off without us, bickering kids in tow. And secondly, how well Aunty Kat could dance a reel, and she with her pink plastic foot and all.

"Fine girl you are," said Florrie, as he twirled her round.