Page 10 - Archangel

wobbly advance, and bear–hugged the malice from Skye’s limbs until he
stilled in exhaustion.
Regaining his balance in the mud and slinging himself away from the
elder’s grasp, MacIain looked into the menacing stare of retribution blazing
far too similar to the one Skye sometimes saw in his own morning mirror.
With MacIain barely breathing and robbed of speech, the interloper again
broke the silence in his Ulster lilt with, “I came here early for your same
reasons, I did. To fall apart in peace. And having lost the best thing I could
find on this wretched earth, I also now ask Sean the same fuggin’ thing you
just did – ‘What now’? So here we are, Skye.”
Shocked again by his familiarity, the elder brother steadied MacIain
with a hand on his arm, saying, “I feel I know you thoroughly from Sean’s
letters and calls in the wee hours. A privilege to meet the man as decent
and daft as Sean in a Godly way. Saved my brother’s life more than once,
you did. You two dreamers saving thousands of others while up to your
arses in their shite. You were a better brother than I was, or they would be,”
motioning toward the two sentries that Skye finally registered as spitting, if
stouter, images of Sean.
Suddenly remembering a major character in Sean’s family remembrances
and letters, Skye mumbled in exhausted recognition, “Rory?”
Sean’s oldest brother turned his glance away from the grave destined
to soon swallow his sibling, softened his stare and admitted, “The same.
Sean mentioned the fire in your eyes which could back off butchers, even
unarmed.” Throwing caution to the wind, he spat , “And it’s that fire
I’m countin’ on. Sean was a saint, as good as a priest and 10 times more
useful with his medical skills. I imagine he ‘saved’ thousands. Got practice
patching us up he did, when we caught an English bullet here and there
before he left this insanity,” motioning toward the blazing Belfast skyline
in the distance.
Rory mused, “Versus myself and my two brothers here, who like me are
probably headed to Hell. But not before all of Ireland is free – and united.
We should be the ones whose pieces they pour into that hole behind you,
not Sean’s.”
Unapologetically, he posed, “Ack, the unfairness of life which leads three
murderers, if the English fascists are to be believed, to ask another favor of
the humanitarian hero. When he’d already saved our Sean twice and more,
at the threat of his own death, he did. And has just now brought what was
left of our family’s finest back to us – in a fuggin’ jar.”

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