This was a piece I submitted in a short story contest. There was a 1500 word limit, which really tested my abilities, so this is the result. As there may be some younger readers or readers unfamiliar with recent Ireland, the IRA stands for the Irish Republican Army, and yes, Christy is a man's name here.
Omission
Ice and sun together, their melt the colour of his pleading. The man behind the glass was looking into the eyes of a man 30 years dead. 18 years old with a gun in his hands, the melting eyes meant something he did not understand. Now they meant everything. Christy Harkin killed a man, married the dead man's sister and on the other side of the glass was the result. The same damn eyes.
The woman sat with her arms folded, suddenly casting her gaze downward. So this is my father, she seemed to say, though she remained silent.
"I don't know what you're looking for," Christy said, looking down at his hands. For just a second he still saw the flash of metal, heard the blast, and he jolted in his chair. The woman looked up.
"I want to know why you're here," she ventured, resting her chin in her hand. Her fingers wandered the contours of her jaw. "I'm not looking for apologies."
"Then I will keep them to myself," Christy responded.
"Very well, daddy." She leaned forward and drove her melting eyes into him. "Why did you kill my uncle?"
***
Tonight was the night for rain. Wash it all away. Christy's hands shook on the steering wheel. Rain pattered against the windscreen and he was distracted by the back and forth, back and forth of the wipers. Away now, away.
"Damn it, Christy! Watch the road!" shouted Cal as the left wheel of the car veered into the surrounding bog. There was a thump in the trunk and Christy was brought back to the present where he was driving as far out into the bog land as the road would lead, all credit given to the thump in the trunk himself. Charlie Spencer. Englishman. He patrolled the area around Culmore and despite the fact that he would be replaced, the message sent after his murder would be unmistakable. The IRA was strong.
Before he knew it he and Cal were leading the way through the bog, Charlie with his hands bound behind, and behind Charlie Joe and Pascal. Christy's legs were freezing. The bog was frozen over and crunched beneath their feet. The sun might have betrayed the flecks of purple heather splayed across these valleys but all was drenched in the oil spill of October night.
Charlie Spencer was silent as he tread each step of his death march.
"Here," declared Cal, and obediently, Christy, Joe, Pascal and Charlie came to a halt. "This is the spot. Christy, son, it's your turn to learn what happens to men who get in the way of Irish freedom. This is for you." Cal handed Christy a pistol. The coolness of the gunmetal burned his hand.
A burst of light came from Pascal's torch. "If you would kneel, please," he said to the shivering Englishman. As the light fell across his face Christy saw the colour in his eyes. Sun and ice, melting. He seemed to be melting beneath the light, his body quaking but saying nothing. He fell to his knees and gave Christy a solitary nod. Do it.
Christy faltered. Mist was rising from Charlie's flesh. He was alive. Human. But not for long. Charlie locked Christy's gaze but the message conveyed was unreadable. Something like fear tinged with resignation. Do it and wash it all away.
Now the pistol was touching Charlie's skin, and the light flashed against the metal as Christy pulled the trigger. The night was broken. He didn't look to the body, he looked to the sky, let the rain fall, and wash this away. I'll never look back, he thought. He dropped the pistol and made his way back to the car without a backward glance toward his comrades who would take care of the body. Mist was rising. Off the body behind him, off the ground, in Christy's mind.
All he knew had been reduced to mist.
***
"I didn't want to kill him." Christy could see his face in the reflection of the glass like a ghost superimposed upon his daughter on the other side. Her gaze didn't soften. "I know you don't believe me," he grumbled.
"No, I believe you. I know you aren't cold blooded." She rolled her eyes. "Just fulfilling your duty and all that. Okay."
The room fell nearly silent. All that could be heard was the buzz of the florescent bulbs above. They flickered occasionally, bringing dark to the normal dim, greenish illumination.
"Do I get to ask you anything?" Christy dared.
"Mum said you always were a chancer." Her voice was coated in frost. "What do you want to know? Why she kept me from you, why she threatened to turn you in?"
"I think I know that all too well--"
"Of course you do!" The frost had melted with the heat rising in her throat. "You betrayed her, how could you have done something like that?" She stood, and put a hand to her forehead. "I'm sorry." Hardly more than a whisper. "This has all been very difficult." She sat down again, and resigned, said, "Go. Ask your question."
"Did you ever want to know me?"
***
Spring had come. Half ten at night and there was still gold on the horizon . . . gold that faded into blue and somewhere in between, those eyes! Christy jumped, his chin slipping from the place it held on his hand.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he heard a musical female voice behind him amidst all the voices in the pub. He didn't turn. "Sir? Are you alright?"
A warm hand on his shoulder and he turned to see what, but eyes--
"I was--just drifting off," Christy stumbled over his words. "Forgive my rudeness, but who are you?"
Her eyes were like ice and sun.
"Ella." She paused, her eyes searching his face. "McCallister."
Christy felt his bated breath deflate. He was seeing things. Ella McCallister. Not Charlie Spencer. The man's eyes were everywhere, in his mind, on the horizon, on her face. Ella McCallister. That was all he needed to know. He had washed Charlie away, away now, away.
***
"Why else do you think I'm here?" Christy's daughter replied.
"Ciara, my Ciara," Christy sighed. He could feel tears form in his eyes. He blinked them away, and deflected his gaze. "You came to know me. What do you know of me?"
"Everything I wish I didn't," she said, the frost settling once again on her syllables. "The IRA, lies of omission, and you couldn't even come after us when mum left."
"She lied to me too, your mother. She told me her name was Ella McCallister. When I found out the woman I loved was really Miss Ella Spencer, my dreams were already that she might be my Mrs. Ella Harkin. I was selfish, I know. But for that reason, I didn't tell her that I--I killed her brother."
"Ella McCallister?"
"She went by that name in case she spoke to the wrong person, she didn't want any association with the dead Charlie Spencer, she felt it wasn't safe and didn't know the ways of the IRA. Ireland was different then."
***
The ground was littered with clothes and baubles, scattered papers and open suitcases soon to be filled and borne away from here, away from Boston where she had moved with her husband and back across the Atlantic, not to Ireland but to England, from whence she truly came.
"It was a phone call, Christy!" Ella yelled at her husband who stood dumbfounded in the doorway.
"My sister told me everything." Now there were tears. "Perhaps you remember a man by the name of Joe Brennan? Someone you might have called your colleague, y-your friend? They nabbed him, the police, and he revealed everything. Where you took my brother, where you shot him and where you, yes Christy, YOU left him to decay!"
Little Ciara stood in the corner crying, holding her ears against the noise of her mother's shouting.
"It's beyond me why you never told me this but we are leaving, Ciara and I, and don't you ever try to find us, or this time I'll be the informant. I'll turn you in."
Christy never saw his wife again.
***
"I have nothing more to ask of you." Ciara's voice had softened. "Frankly I just wanted to see you, daddy, I wanted you to know that I always wanted that."
"It was all I ever wanted to see you again, despite this glass, and the circumstances." Christy bowed his head.
"You know it wasn't mum? She said nothing about you to anyone."
"Turns out the police have been after me for a while. I turned myself in. I thought you might come to see me. I didn't know how else to find you. I am happier than I would have ever been, Ciara."
Gender:
Points: 1062
Reviews: 1