TADHG & THE CLURICAUNS
By Aonghus Fallon
Copyright 2012 Aonghus Fallon
Smashwords edition

I’d left for Boston just before the crap hit the fan. CJ kept me posted about all the developments. The first bit of news was how the mad, bad Tadhg O’Kane had got Francis’s sister pregnant. There’d always been a certain chemistry between those two, so no surprises there. And I think he was fond of her after his fashion – inasmuch as Tadhg cared about anybody. The whole town was abuzz with the news, principally – what was Tadhg going to do? Leave town? Or make an honest woman out of Siobhan? The smart money was on him doing a runner. So you can imagine how surprised we all were when he married her.
‘That won’t last,’ I said to CJ. Only it did. I was in Boston for four years, during which period Tadhg had two more children and started working full-time with his dad. A happy ending, so.
That all depends. Tadhg was the man who didn’t give a damn about anybody and that made him something of a hero to us. He had balls. This happy-ever-after lark wasn’t his style at all. CJ said he couldn’t make head or tail of it himself. ‘But I haven’t given up on the bastard yet,’ he’d add.
When I finally got a chance to fly home one Christmas I sent CJ an e-mail and he said he’d arrange for all the old gang to meet down in Grace’s, but warned me not to get my hopes up.
I wasn’t surprised to see the town looked the same. A few new shops had popped up to replace the old, but that was pretty much it. It’s handsome enough: a long main street with a line of fine three-storey buildings facing a big granite courthouse where the street climbs up the hill. The buildings at the other end of town are smaller and pokier, but there’s a cinema and a couple of decent pubs and the town hotel, covered in creeping ivy.
They were all there - bar Joe - when I arrived: Francis, Tadhg’s brother-in-law, a decent, quiet hardworking farmer’s son, CJ looking a bit balder and more bitter since I last saw him, and Tadhg. 
I think Francis had changed the least – like a lot of red-haired men he’d age suddenly but until he came to that point in his life, he’d look perpetually twenty-five. CJ had failed his second year in Communications (too much ganj, we all reckoned) then dropped out and was now working in the local radio station as a researcher. CJ had been Tadhg’s court jester back in the day, a plain, bespectacled little fellow with a sharp tongue. As for Tadhg –
I’d forgotten how big he was. Six-four. It was strange seeing him in a suit. He stood up and shook my hand when I arrived. I kept waiting for him to start clowning around, only he never did. Just smiled and asked me how I was getting on – I was the one who’d got away, see. He was still a good-looking fellow, with his long, handsome face and twinkling blue eyes, though the thick black curls were shorter than I remembered, and I could see the odd grey hair.
Would it be a terrible thing to say I was a bit disappointed? Sure I was happy for him, but I had always secretly expected great things of Tadhg O’Kane. We’d always reckoned he’d either end up famous or behind bars. I guess I just wasn’t expecting this pleasant, but slightly dull man who asked after my mother and father. I kept thinking about the time Tadhg had jumped on top of every car parked along one side of the main street at two in the morning until he’d gone from one end of town to the other and left each bonnet looking like an elephant had sat on it. He was charming and funny and – I reckon – genuinely interested in people. But he also had a cruel streak, never more so than with CJ who, being a bit of a masochist, just seemed to lap up every cheap jibe Tadhg threw his way.
And I could see CJ trying to goad Tadhg into some semblance of his old self if only for my benefit and getting nowhere for his troubles. Finally he knocked back his pint and stood up. ‘I’m off,’ he announced, even though we all knew he was just heading back to his grubby little flat for a few spliffs.
‘Stay a bit, CJ,’ Tadhg said gently.
‘Sure what’s the point?’ CJ snapped. Then he turned to me and said the strangest thing. ‘You know Tadhg – the great Tadhg O’Kane, the man who was never scared of anything – will cross the street sooner than walk past Lawrence O’Toole’s shop? The great O’Kane, scared of a wee fellow old enough to be his grandfather.’
And with this he wiped the foam off his mouth and walked out. 
Tadhg just laughed sheepishly, although ‘sheepishly’ is never a word I’d have associated with him until then. After he’d vanished off to the jax, I cross-examined Francis. ‘How are things between him and Siobhan?’
Sure, Siobhan was Francis’s sister, but that man was nothing if not honesty personified, and we both knew that Tadhg had the morals of an alleycat. Who else is he riding these days? That’s what I really meant.
Francis smiled shyly. ‘Seems to be going grand,’ he said. ‘He’s a different man, Tom.’
‘Better or worse?’
Francis shrugged. ‘Ask him why he won’t walk past O’Toole’s shop. And if you end up in Tobins while you’re over here, have a look at the old photographs on the corridor to the jax.’ He held out his hand.
‘You’re heading?’
‘You know me. I never have more than two. I’ve eighty cows to milk tomorrow morning. Take care of yourself, Tom.’

‘Just the two of us?’ Tadhg asked when he came back.
‘Yup.’ I said as he sat down. ‘What was CJ on about?’
He stared back at me cryptically. ‘Come again?’
‘You know – about you and O’Toole.’
Lawrence O’Toole was a dour little man, his pouchy face criss-crossed with countless lines. It was impossible to guess his age – he looked like a prematurely wizened twelve-year old. He fixed shoes and cut keys. I don’t know if he ever made much money out of it, but he and that shop had been there for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t think of any reason why Tadhg of all people might be scared of him.
 ‘Oh that.’ He reached out for his glass, turning it this way and that in one big hand and examining it from every angle – as if a pint of Guinness ever looked any different depending on how you looked at it. Finally he lifted the glass to his mouth, took a long swallow of the black stuff and put the glass carefully back down on the formica-topped table. ‘I suppose I might as well tell you the whole story,’ he said. ‘Not that you’re going to believe a word of it. You know Siobhan was pregnant when I married her?’
 ‘I did. What of it?’ I was nonplussed. What possible connection could there be between Lawrence O’Toole and Siobhan? 
‘When Dad heard, he called me into his office and told me I had to make an honest woman of her. I loved her but I wasn’t ready to go up the aisle. Not just yet. And Dad lecturing me about my responsibilities only made me dig my heels in. I told him to take a hike. The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wondered what Siobhan would think when she heard, and I felt rotten. Only I was on the horns of a dilemma, see? I married her, I’d just be doing what the old eejit told me. 
I got so miserable thinking about the whole mess I went on a bit of a bender. I walked out of that office at noon and I spent the rest of the day in here – until they threw me out, as a matter of fact.
I still wasn’t ready to go home. So I set off towards the top of the town. This was a Friday night and things were just starting to take off: people were pouring out of the pubs and the street was chock-a-block with cars honking. Only I wasn’t in the humour for a nightclub, so when I came to the junction, I turned right, then crossed the street, heading down the hill until I came to a wee road on the left. You know the one – the road that vanishes off between a couple of warehouses and an estate. Being an auctioneer’s son I know the lay of the land pretty well around here, and I knew there was feckall houses along that particular stretch of road and seeing as I wanted some time to myself that suited my mood exactly.
Five minutes later I’d left both the warehouses and that estate behind me and the road was so narrow one car would have had difficulty driving on it, let alone two. I passed a couple of bungalows, then a farmhouse. I don’t think I saw another house from then on.
It was a lovely clear night, the moon shining down on everything – on that little road that was like something out of a fairytale and on the open fields I could see now and then through the hawthorns. It was hard to believe I was only ten minutes’ walk from town. At first I could still hear horns honking or the odd car roaring up the main street but after a while the only sounds were me own breaths and the sighing of the bushes in the breeze.
I sang for a bit. I shouted up at the sky. I cursed my father. I cursed Siobhan. I cursed the whole bloody town. Only it didn’t seem like anyone was listening. I staggered on and on, that road twisting this way and that under that moonlit sky, sometimes between low hedges, sometimes under copses of ash, for mile after a mile until eventually I came to a little humpbacked bridge and that’s where I stopped to catch my breath. 
When I looked over the side of that bridge I could see the still black waters of the canal beneath me. I stared down into that water, and tears started to trickle down my face. I hated myself for how I was treating Siobhan but I hated Dad even more for backing me into a corner. And then I started thinking of all the women I’d mistreated and how I’d picked fights with men for no good reason – remember the time I broke poor Willy Clancy’s jaw? – and that only made me cry all the harder. 
I was all ready to jump off that bridge and make an end of myself when somebody said - ‘would you look at that big cry-baby!’ 
Well I turned round – and who was standing behind me on that moonlit road, right in the middle of that bridge? A whole crowd of little men, none of them higher than your elbow, with Lawrence O’Toole standing at the front of them. They were all in rags and some of them were even barefoot and I’d say they were even drunker than I was, if the smell off them was anything to go by. Seeing them altogether only made something obvious – I mean, have you ever noticed just how small Lawrence O’Toole is? Not much bigger than a child. We’ve got so used to seeing him every day of our lives we’ve stopped seeing what’s right under our noses – that there’s something fierce bloody queer, fierce strange, about that man. 
And here’s another thing: I recognised one other fellah in that group. He has a shop down in Mountrath, and do you know what? He’s in exactly the same line of business. You see what I’m getting at? Them men were all of a type. A breed apart. And I mean that literally. The sort that are supposed to hide under a hill or a bunch of foxgloves. Only they’re all hiding out in plain view where we can see them.
What made it all the stranger was that I could hear a jet rumbling by overhead. Anyhow, Lawrence swaggers up to me, spits over the side of the bridge then looks up with a crafty grin splitting that baggy little face of his – I think that was when I first realised I’d never seen him smile until then – and says, ‘what’s the problem, Tadhg? Can’t make up your mind?’
‘Something like that,’ says I. I couldn’t get over how different he seemed. Maybe the booze and the moonlight brought out another side to him, but I don’t think I ever looked down on a face so wicked. The rest of them were no better. They were old men, one and all. I was twice their size. They still scared the shite out of me. They looked like a right bunch of buckos. And what were they doing wandering the roads at that time of night anyway?
Lawrence scratches his chin and squints out across that canal to the fields beyond. ‘Well now Tadhg, maybe me and my friends can help you there.’
‘And how is that?’ I ask.
‘See one side of you says one thing and the other side of you says something else when what they should be doing is going at hammer and tongs - and may the best man win!’ 
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Lawrence,’ says I.
He cocks one eyebrow up at me. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you, Tadhg? Good and bad battling it out and the lad with the handiest fists the winner! Would you not agree that this is the most sensible means of resolving your dilemma?’
‘I suppose,’  I said with a laugh. ‘If there was two of me!’
He nods. ‘That can be arranged. Are you a betting man, Tadhg?’
‘I’ve put a few quid on the horses every now and then,’ I said cautiously. I was starting to wonder what I was getting myself into.
‘Well here’s how it’ll be – me and the lads are backing the fellow who broke Willy Clancy’s jaw. And if he wins, we want Siobhan’s child.’
I was scuttered but I could still feel a cold chill in my bones when Lawrence said those words. These lads meant business right enough. 
‘Sure he’ll have no interest in keeping the boy anyway,’ Lawrence went on quickly. 
‘I suppose. Only what would you want with somebody’s baby, Lawrence?’
‘Each and every one of us here was such a child once, Tadhg,’ Lawrence says gravely. ‘They gave us a home when the world turned its back on us. They reared us as their own, they taught us a trade, and then they sent us out into the world so that they might know all they could of human goings-on.’
I couldn’t resist saying - ‘well they can’t have fed you much, to judge by the size of yez!’
‘They fed us a special brew of their own concoction. A brew that lengthens life even as it stunts growth. But that’s neither here nor there. Do you agree to our bargain or not?’
I burped loudly and leant against the bridge wall. ‘That all depends. I suppose I must have a good side to me as well. What if that lad wins? What does he get out of the business?’
Lawrence grinned up at me. ‘Whichever lad wins gets to see the back of the other fellah for good – as long as he finds a graveyard to bury him in before sunrise. Otherwise you go back to the way you are now and we go home empty-handed.’ 
He spat on his hand and held it out. ‘So is it a bargain or not?’
I knew better than to strike a deal with the little people, only it didn’t seem to me like I’d anything to lose. The bold, bad side of me would be happy to see the back of that baby. The good side would be happy to see the back of the bold bad side. And if neither of us ended up in a hole in the ground, then there’d be no harm done either way.
‘It is,’ says I.
And so we shook hands. Next thing I knew, somebody had clocked me on the side of the head. I don’t need to tell you who it was. I was turning to face him when he hit me again. 
‘Come on, ye soft bastard!’ he grins. 
And next minute the two of us were circling one another on that bridge.
I hated that fellah the minute I clapped eyes on him, for all he was the spit of me. You could tell by the smirk on his face and the way he danced about on that road that he thought he was the business. And that smile was cruel. He didn’t give a damn about me. Anybody. He only cared about winning. And if that meant killing me and burying me, then so be it.
I should have been scared, now I knew this was a fight to the death. Only it was just at that very moment that I realised I loved Siobhan with all my heart, that I wanted to marry her and that the prospect of becoming a father filled me with pure joy. So no matter how vicious or dirty that scrap, I’d have right on my side and that meant I was bound to win. 
I suppose now I felt that way – and still do – because Lawrence had been true to his original promise and made two men out of one.
For all his cockiness, my twin was no more sober than I was. After those first two blows I don’t think either of us landed a punch for another five minutes, despite how all those little men gathered around us, clapping and cheering and urging us on. ‘Come on, Tadhg!’ they’d cry out – I hated that; hearing my own name and then realising that they meant the other fellah. 
I didn’t even see that blow coming – the one that struck home. I only felt it. Right on the kisser. Even as warm, salty blood flooded my mouth, I heard him say - ‘you might as well give up, boy! I’m the better man and you know it!’
Lawrence and the others all cheered.
‘We’ll see,’ I mumbled through the blood.
I went for him then, throwing punch after punch, hoping one would land home, but he ducked and weaved and laughed in my face. His carry-on was his undoing. I landed a lucky blow on his right ear and he nearly fell over. That riled him no end – he wasn’t used to having somebody get the better of him. His face darkened with temper and he tried to kick me – a wild roundhouse kick – and lost his balance. 
His arms were flailing around in the air as he fell, so his head got the brunt of it. I could hear the crack of his skull as he hit the road and I knew the minute I saw his legs sag and his face stare emptily up at the stars that he was a dead man. As if the blood spreading out in a sticky black pool out from behind his head wasn’t evidence enough.
I wiped the blood from my mouth. Then I heaved him up onto my back and faced town. 
Oh, Lawrence and his buddies didn’t like that one bit! They started to dance around me, blocking me every way I turned. ‘Leave him be! Leave him be! The bargain was that you beat him fair and square!’
‘The bargain was that the winner buries the loser,’ says I. ‘Now get out of me way, yez pack of gobshites!’
They did in the end, if none too quickly, and I set off for town with himself on my back, already turning cold in the chilly night air. He was a dead weight. Soon I was soaked in sweat and my head was starting to pound. To make matters worse when I glanced back, I saw Lawrence and his buddies were all trailing along behind me. Maybe they were still hoping to change my mind. I suppose if I didn’t bury himself, there was always the chance of a re-match, something like that.
 Then – worst of all – somebody spoke.
‘Don’t do this, Tadhg. Sure what are you without me? Nothing.’
To this day I don’t know where that voice came from. That body was as cold as ice by then, and already turning stiff, its two arms wrapped around my neck and its head bouncing of my shoulder. And that voice didn’t sound like the voice of a dead man – it was entirely normal. Cheerful, even.
‘I’d sooner be nothing than an ignorant bastard who treated anybody who ever cared for him like crap.’
I was just wondering if maybe was Lawrence talking – anybody reared by the little people has to got to know a trick or two – when the voice answered, ‘sometimes you need to be a bit of a bastard if you want to get on in life, Tadhg. Sometimes people get hurt. That’s just the way it is.’
‘Willy Clancy might disagree.’ 
A sound like a sigh. ‘Jesus Christ. Here we go. You know that fellah wasn’t pulling his weight - and all because he reckoned he ought to be captain. We nearly lost the final because of him, remember? Then he turned nasty when he was confronted about it. It’s a pity his jaw got broken, but the man had it coming.’
I heaved that body a little bit higher on my shoulders. ‘Clancy was a wanker all right, but I’ll say one thing for him.’
‘What’s that?’
‘At least he didn’t shag his best friend’s partner.’
That shut him up. I wasn’t in a good place, though. He was going to be annoying me all night. I knew that already. Until I found a hole to put him in. Not to mention that he seemed to be getting heavier and heavier with every step I took. And what was I going to do once I was back in town? I’d cut a pretty sight, walking down the main street with a body on my back and a bunch of dwarves at my heels. It would be the early hours of the morning by then, but all it took was one restless soul, one poor divil who still hadn’t gone to bed, and I’d be the talk of the parish.
That was when I spotted a copse of beech in the middle of a field on my left. Even at that distance I could see there was a stone wall running around those trees, which meant it must be an old graveyard. 
Maybe I wouldn’t have to carry that body back into town after all.
I meant to sling it over the gate. That was when I found out rigor mortis had already set in and the arms had locked across one another. 
I couldn’t get him off me. At least I still had the use of my hands. I clambered over that gate and waded through the long wet grass. As I got closer I could see gravestones through the trunks of the trees and knew I’d guessed right. It must have been very old, that graveyard. The wall had collapsed in places. The moon was high up in the sky by now and everything was bathed in its silvery light. I scrambled over some stones and then I had another bit of luck – for what was propped against one gravestone only an ould shovel?
When I looked back I saw Lawrence and his buddies were still following me. One or two of them had taken off the shapeless hats they were wearing, and all of them had adopted the same sorrowful expressions, like the chief mourners at a funeral. Play-acting of course. They might have been men like you and me, but they’d been reared by the little people and knew nothing about real sorrow anymore than they knew anything about real happiness.
Well I chose a patch of ground at random and set to work with a vengeance, even though my back was already near breaking from having that eejit on top of it, while Lawrence and the others sat on the nearby tombstones and watched. After half an hour I’d dug a hole that was a good two feet deep.
Only then my shovel hit something that wasn’t earth. And in that same instance somebody coughed - somebody who was already in that hole – and I caught a whiff of mould and rot and long decayed flesh and when I looked down into the hole again, who do you think was lying there only Katie Nelligan! 
You remember Katie. She used to run the sweetshop at the other end of town when we were kids. Anyhow, she was lying there in that hole with her big hairy hands folded across her belly, wearing the same old apron and tatty blue cardigan she had on the day she died. 
Then she half sits up, her hair all undone, and even as she does, I see a great big fat greasy worm slither down her withered thighs. ‘Tadhg O’Kane!’ she rasps. ‘Must you disturb an old woman’s sleep, you ignorant gossoon?’
I’m not ashamed to admit it. I screamed. Then I threw away that shovel and I ran for my life, with that body bumping and jiggling around on my back and the laughter of Lawrence and his cronies ringing in my ears. I think that was when I first started to suspect they were after playing some trick on me – for what would Katie Nelligan be doing, buried in a place like that? Her people were from Ballymore.
I don’t even remember how I ended up back on that road. I only know my headache was gone and suddenly my mind was as clear as clear. This was no dream. That bugger was as heavy as ever for one thing. Even as I thought as much, the voice said – ‘Tara knew what she was doing. And if she really loved Joe, she’d never have slept with some other fellah in the first place.’
‘The truth of the matter is that you couldn’t stand your wingman having the best-looking woman in town for a girlfriend. Sure isn’t that what being top dog is all about? Getting the best of everything? Even if it meant her and Joe splitting up and her going off to Canada afterwards?’
‘You know what? You sound just like dad.’
Lawrence and his buddies had already caught up with us. They were in great form, laughing and chuckling amongst themselves and I could smell tobacco – they were passing a clay pipe amongst themselves and wee bottle of whiskey. Small and all as that bottle was, there always seemed to be enough to go round. Lawrence caught my eye and grinned. ‘Well you showed a clean pair of heels!’ was all he said.
But I had other things on my mind. I cleared my throat, then said softly – ‘taking things too seriously, you mean? Like what? Siobhan?’
A snort. ‘Don’t get me wrong, boy. She’s a lovely girl, but women can be sneaky bitches. You think it was just bad luck she got pregnant? Me arse. She’s had her eye on you from day one. And now she and dad are going to make sure you do the honest thing. That’s why you need me. I’m the only person willing to stand up to the pair of them.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘And you wonder why I want to bury you? The whole parish would turn its back on me.’
‘And what if they do? You want my opinion? The sooner you get out of this kip, the better.’
‘Yeah? And where would I go?’
Another faint sigh. Or maybe it was just the wind in the trees. ‘Jesus Christ – use your imagination. Anywhere’s got to be better than here. Or do you want to spend the rest of your life rotting away in the arsehole of nowhere and under your daddy’s thumb? Oh, I forgot. Of course you do. We’re opposites, right?’
But I was already marching up that hill and not paying him a blind bit of attention anymore. That road was very steep and it was taking every ounce of my strength and concentration to get up it. 
Half an hour later I’d cleared the top of the hill and started down the far side, with Lawrence and the others still following me. 
That was when I saw the second graveyard. It was right next to the road. There was even a little stone stile to climb over, but the whole enclosure was covered in brambles and yew - abandoned, just like the first one.
I was tired by then. Fierce tired. It took me the guts of ten minutes to climb over that stile with himself hanging off me. And when I looked up again, I saw the dead had gathered around to watch. Their clothes were mostly rags, but it was surprising the stuff that had survived being underground for seventy odd years. I remember one lad wearing a funeral jacket that looked as good as new, apart from being torn at the shoulder. And a woman wearing a dress and hat, no less – a hat with a dusty old feather still trailing from it. And most of them still had their hair. 
Their faces were just bone though; dry, dusty bone with only the odd rag of flesh clinging onto it, and empty sockets where their eyes should have been. Not the sort of faces you could read, but their general demeanour made their feelings all too clear. Tadhg O’Kane was not welcome on the premises. 
I climbed back over that stile and out onto the road. 
‘Why don’t you sit down for a bit, Tadhg?’ Lawrence suggests. ‘You’re looking awful tired.’
I didn’t even bother answering him. I set off again, but I was thinking hard now. Harder than I’d thought all night. I didn’t remember climbing any hills on my way to the bridge. Or seeing any graveyards along the side of the road, for that matter. And I kept remembering how Lawrence and the others had all jostled around me when I’d first picked up that body.
I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘You hoors,’ I said softly.
I turned round. Lawrence’s expression was so innocent I knew I had to be right.
‘What is it, Tadhg?’ he asks.
Oh aye. They’d led me a merry dance. I wasn’t walking back into town. Otherwise I’d have arrived there hours ago. I was walking away from town. And everything that had happened to me since I left that bridge had been spells and moonshine, a way of raising my hopes only to dash them again – and to delay me ever burying that body!
I looked up at that hill and the prospect of climbing it all over again filled me with despair. And the minute I took a step back the way I’d come, it felt wrong – my heart telling me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. 
But my head said otherwise. That’s how Lawrence and his ilk cast their spells over you; by appealing to your emotions rather than your common sense. 
If they’d kept a grip on themselves I might not have been so sure, only they panicked and started crowding around me and trying to block my every step - without ever actually touching me, mind. 
‘What are you doing, Tadhg?’ Lawrence demands. ‘Do you not want to get to town?’
‘I do indeed,’ says I, heaving that body up for the umpteenth time and setting off up that hill.
It was hard, back-breaking work. Especially with Lawrence and his cronies teasing and mocking me every step of the way. And when I got to the top, I could see the moonlit road snaking off below, open fields to its left and right, and no sign of the town at all, and I wondered just how far I’d walked. I couldn’t even see the bridge.

It was four o’clock by the time I got back to where I’d fought my other half. A cold grey dread was creeping over me by then. Would I make it back in time? By then I’d figured out I didn’t have to go through the centre of town to reach the graveyard; I just had go off the road and down onto the tow path and follow the canal for a mile or two before crossing back over it. 
I don’t know when I realised Lawrence and his buddies had given up. I looked behind me, and the towpath was empty. It was just after five. I had three quarters of an hour at most to reach the graveyard, and that body was heavier than ever. 
But that wasn’t the only thing slowing me down. Dark, dark doubt was gnawing away at me. I was remembering what that voice had said and wondering if maybe he was right. 

I crept across one of the roads into town, then through an estate, then up behind a line of shops until I’d reached the back of the graveyard. I was so stiff and sore by then it’s a wonder I was able to climb over that wall. I still had to bury the body and it’d be light in twenty minutes.
That was when I had my first and only bit of luck. There was a freshly dug grave just inside that wall.
That’s when the voice spoke for the last time. ‘You’re not going through with this, are you? Sure that’s pure bloody crazy, boy –’
‘Maybe,’ I said. But my mind was made up. That corpse’s cold, stiff arms were still locked around my neck, but I twisted my hip and – with whatever strength remained to me - used my shoulder to pitch him forward over my head. 
He landed at the bottom of that grave with a wet thud.
I can’t tell you how good it felt to have all that weight off my shoulders and to stand up straight after so many hours. I searched here and there until I found a spade, and then I set to filling in that grave with a vengeance, talking to what lay at the bottom of it the whole while.
 ‘You said I’m nothing without you. Fair enough. Only what are you without me? Just some cold, empty-hearted bastard in a hurry to be somebody, a man who doesn’t care who he hurts, a man who was going to wake up some morning without a friend in the world.’
I bent down low, just to make sure he could hear the next bit. ‘And why would I want to be party to that?’
There was no reply. Golden fingers of light were already creeping across the green grass. I patted the last bit of soil down flat, then put the spade back where I’d found it, and went home. I slept for twelve hours solid. You already know the rest. Me and Dad made up and me and Siobhan got married.’

A drunken hallucination, fuelled in no small part by guilt: that was my initial assessment of Tadhg’s story. I mean, what class of man could carry a corpse on his back for mile after mile? No man. Not even Tadhg, and he’s as strong as a horse. Also, I cycled down that road the following day. It was just as Tadhg had described it; a narrow road with very few houses along it - and I could see how easy it might be to get disorientated, standing on that bridge, how you might wonder if you were coming or going, as the view in either direction is identical. But when I crossed that bridge and kept on cycling, I reached the motorway after little more than a mile, and no graveyard of any shape, size or persuasion did I see along the way. 
I even dawdled outside Lawrence O’Toole’s shop for a minute or two on my way back, watching him at work – his stool and workbench are right inside the window. He’s in plain view, all day long. He never looked up at me or acknowledged my presence in any way; his small grim eyes fixed on the task in hand. He really is the tiniest man I’ve ever seen. Most of us have been passing by his shop every day of our lives – since we were children, I suppose – and just stopped noticing. 
But so what?
By then I’d forgotten all about what Francis had told me. At least, until my last night home, when I found myself in Tobin’s after a lengthy pub crawl in honour of the new year. I was very drunk by then and just making my way down the narrow corridor to the jax when I noticed the framed black-and-white photographs lining the walls.
There were a lot of them, and – truth to tell – I didn’t examine them in any great detail. They were mostly reproductions of the town as it had been a hundred years earlier. But when I was heading back one particular photograph caught my eye and I froze, swaying ever so slightly, in my tracks.
You ever get one of those moments when something you’ve assumed is impossible turns out to be true? Or might just be true? Do you remember how you felt? That weird, horrible sense of vertigo?
It was a photograph of two women walking down a street. They were wearing the dark, bulky dresses and broad-brimmed hats of an earlier era. Underneath ran the simple legend – Mrs Tobin Senior and her sister visiting Bandon, c. 1900. A man was standing outside the shop just behind them, looking in the other direction, clearly oblivious to the photographer’s presence – and as God is my witness, that man was Lawrence O’Toole. People will often say a grandson is the spit of his grandfather, but there are usually enough discrepancies to distinguish one from the other. He was in his shirt sleeves and wearing what looked like a leather apron, as well as sporting a handsome pair of sideburns, but it was Lawrence all right. By coincidence the photographer had caught him wearing an expression that was very typical of him; a scowl. It was obvious he’d just stepped outside his shop for a moment or two to take a break. He looked no older or younger than he did now. 
So now I’m not so sure anymore – I  mean, that Tadgh imagined the whole thing. And if there ever was a fight, I’m not even sure the right man won. I mean, what do you think?