Chapter 3: Family Matters
With my pistol holstered at my side under my coat, I strolled across Shop Street and towards St. Nicholas. I hesitated outside a barber shop, but swallowed by pride and went inside.
I hung my dark grey fedora on the coat rack. Peg had the hat special ordered to fit my larger-than-normal head. It fit like a glove and it covered my bald head from sun and rain alike with a dash of complements on the side. If Peg had taken the hat with her, I might’ve followed. I love that hat.
“I don’t offer discounts for the bald, son,” the barber said without looking up from the customer in the chair. The row of old men sitting on the bench behind him roared with laughter.
“It never gets old, does it dad,” I said, running a hand over my head.
“Unlike you,” my father said in reply. “What do you want? I got a line of . . .”
“I got something for Peg,” I interrupted.
“She’s your wife, son. How would . . .”
“When Síle comes with your lunch today, would you please give her this?” I asked, taking the cash-filled envelope with her name on it out of my pocket. “She knows where Peg went and how to get it to her.”
“Just put it in the draw over there,” dad pointed with the ever present scissors in his hand. I walked over and opened the draw in question. I was surprised to see a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Safety Hammerless revolver lying inside. The engraving on the mother of pearl handle told me who the owner of the gun was and it wasn’t Dad.
“And you can take that thing with you. Síle brought that by last week. Peg don’t want it; Síle don’t want it; and I should don’t, either.”
I snapped the ole ‘Lemon Squeezer’ open and shut again before sticking it in the small of my back under my belt. “Did ya know it was loaded?” I asked.
“How would I know a thing like that? Just get that thing out of my shop,” he snapped at me. It wasn’t until I joined the army that my dad told me about the time he was robbed at gun point. It was before I was born, but dad described it like it had happened to him the day before. A drunk with a shaky hand burst in the shop at closing and shoved a pistol in dad’s face. Dad cooperated, but was left tied up and locked in the backroom. Dad was about as fond of guns as he was of my career choices.
My dad was a fisherman who gave up the sea when he moved to the big city after he married a Norwegian novice who’d run away from her religious order and ended up in, of all places, Connemara. Dad started sweeping up hair back in the day and eventually bought his own shop. He hoped I’d go into the family business, just as he hadn’t. But I spent enough of my youth sweeping up hair to not want any more to do with it.
I left the shop without another word between us. Maybe I should’ve become a barber like my dad. He’s never hurting for work. Hair grows for free, but it doesn’t cut itself. My dad, when we do talk, likes to tell me that I’m as bald as one of them Asian monks just to spite him. Maybe he’s right.
As I stood in front of dad’s shop I saw my little sister, Síle, walking up the street. She was on her way to bring dad his lunch. She had taken over this duty from mum a while back. Dad had talked about retiring early, selling the shop, and moving someplace tropical with mum. But then mum got sick and after she passed . . . Now the shop seems to be the only thing keeping him going.
My twin nieces were with Síle today, so I decided to slip away before I was noticed and had to stop for a chat. I’m not often in the mood to be around children these days. (Is it wrong that I miss little Jeannie more than Peg?)
After ducking around the corner I entered St. Nicholas’ beautiful red side door. I found the lanky, yellow-haired vicar flitting about the church, attending to several things at once and accomplishing none of them. He was whistling a hymn, but stopped when he saw me. With some effort I got Rev. Stockwood pinned down in a pew long enough for a chat. It was odd how reluctant this normally chattering clergyman was to talk.
“God’s peace upon you, my son,” said the man ten years my junior.
“What’s the craíc, vicar?” I asked.
“All is glorious through God’s grace,” he replied, removing his spectacles and cleaning them on his cassock. “How may I help you today, Mr. Browne?”
“I’m looking for a piano player,” I said matter-of-factly, without divulging more than I needed to.
“Will any piano player do,” Reverend Stockwood asked, “or do you have a particular one in mind?”
“The particular one I’m looking for,” I answered, “is an Austrian gentleman. He would’ve been new to town about a month ago.”
I could see the normally relaxed cleric tense up.
“There was a young foreign lad who played the organ, very beautifully I might add, here in the church for a couple of funerals and a wedding,” the reverend began.
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“No,” came the too-quick response. Recovering just as quickly, “I enjoyed his God-given musical talents so much that I asked him to consider playing the organ at the occasional Sunday services.”
“He was that good, was he?”
“Yes,” Reverend Stockwood said, “and as our regular organist is advancing in years I had hoped to secure a ready replacement before too long.”
“But I take it he declined your offer?” I prompted.
“Not exactly,” he said, fumbling to put his glasses back on evenly. “I never heard back from him. I’d hoped Mr. Schrödinger would be more reliable . . . but alas, he must have moved on without another word.”
The vicar noticed me taking note of his slip of Schrödinger’s name, unprompted. I let it slide, for the moment.
“And you have no idea where I might find him?”
“I’m afraid not. I suspect he travelled south to find work in Limerick or Cork,” he said, “but if you come back this Sunday for service . . .”
“Thanks, but no thanks, vicar,” I said. “I won’t be ‘taking the soup’ today.”
The normally peaceful reverend glared over his glasses at my turn of phrase. Realizing I’d crossed a line, I tried to make good my escape.
“Thank you,” I said and almost meant it. “Cheers, vicar.”
“Godspeed, my son.”
As I left through the main doors toward Lombard Street I had the nagging sense that I hadn’t asked the reverend the right question.
My thoughts were interrupted by the scraping of metal on stone. Glancing over my shoulder I saw St. Nicholas’ custodian tending the graveyard. Everyone called him “Pig-Sty,” but only behind his back. In fact, most people avoided talking to him all together. But I knew that his near invisible social status allowed him to see and hear more than most ever would. Maybe there was something to learn at church after all.
I rounded the church corner and found Pig-Sty bent over a grave, scraping moss off a headstone. With the light shining brightly behind him, I could make out the cloud of filth that surrounded him and earned him his nickname. It was difficult to make out the original color of his clothing through the layers of dust and mud and stains and smears and . . . He is a dirty man is what I’m saying, and either he didn’t notice or didn’t care. But fair play to him all the same. I wish I had is gift for ignoring what other people thought of him.
I took my time approaching and readied myself for the smell of him.
“What’s strange?” I asked.
The large-framed man enveloped my outstretched hand in his sizable paw. I made a mental note not to wipe off the dirt he left on my palm until I was out of sight.
“Everything,” he said with a voice too small for his large frame. “And it’s grand, is it not?”
Optimism like that tends to depress me, but from Pig-Sty I couldn’t help but smile.
“Tis frightfully hot weather to be working outside,” I said getting the ball rolling.
“It is, it is,” he agreed, “but it’s a wonderful change of pace all the same.”
“I fear we’ll pay for it later though,” I said, squinting up into the sky and shading my eyes with my hat.
“Perhaps, but today is good drying-weather and that’s good enough for me.”
“Have ya been keeping up with the news lately?” I asked as introduction to more pointed questions.
“I’ve no need of the papers,” Pig-Sty said. “I get all the news I need from what I see and hear.”
“Speaking of listening,” I said slyly, “did ya get a chance to hear that foreign organist play? The Rev. Stockwood was telling me about him. He was quite taken with him.”
“Aye. He was the best I ever heard,” Pig-Sty said with an ever growing smile. “And he had quite the gift for jazz!”
“Are ya a jazz man yourself?” I asked.
“I am, I am,” he stammered with excitement. “I was delighted when Mr. Schrödinger told me he would be auditioning for that new club out in Salthill.”
“Did yer man get the gig?”
“I would think so,” he speculated. “At any rate, he was mighty good, pure class he was, and he hasn’t been back here to the church since. I figure he’s playing there full-time and hasn’t time to play for the pittance the church could pay him.”
“I’ll have to check it out,” I said.
“Be sure to come back and tell me how it was.”
“I will indeed,” I promised. “I’d best be off. I’ll be back and tell ya how I liked the club and if Mr. Schrödinger was playing there.”
“That’d be grand,” he said, showing less than a full set of far-from-pearly-white teeth.
As I turned to leave, Pig-Sty stopped me in my tracks with what he said next.
“Ya know what? It’s odd you mentioning Mr. Schrödinger like that,” he said, “as there was a smallish fella in a fancy suit just the other day asking after him.”
“Ya don’t say,” I said. “Did ya know the man?”
“No,” he said, “and my Irish is none so good, so I had trouble understanding him completely. And the reverend certainly seemed shaken up after speaking with him.”
I hadn’t gotten an address for Schrödinger, but there was only one jazz club west of the Shannon and it was just a scenic walk away.
“Thanks a million for the tip,” I said as I started to leave. “I’ll walk over there now and go check out the club.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time, Mr. Browne. I hear that club doesn’t even open its doors until the sun goes down.”