Author's Notes: Probably one of the stranger things I've written, inspired by late 1800s/early 1900s Irish culture. The footnotes (marked with numbers in the story and at the end) are from James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners (which you really should if you haven't yet). I hope it's an enjoyable read, and feedback is very much appreciated.
Deoc an Doruis
His stomach felt tight, his muscles weak, and his clothes carried the faint stench of a dried mixture of blood, river water, and sweat from the humid, hazy summer night. In the shadowy darkness that surrounded him, his walk could have been mistaken for that of a cripple. It was the last time, he had decided by now and reinforced with each step he took, that he would amble into the wrong territory looking for a stray subordinate. No one had ever soaked him so bad before.
He didn't recognize where he was. He knew he was in Brooklyn, no doubt about that, but lights had been turned out and candles and lanterns extinguished long ago. The last corner he had stumbled around he'd had to feel the wall of to avoid total blindness from the fog. His eyes still stung.
Around that corner, by some miracle of a God he'd stopped believing in long ago, he saw the faint glow from a light through the slits of his near-shut eyes. He wasn't the only one conscious at this hour. People were awake, he realized, possibly waiting for someone like him; right now he had to have a little hope, that maybe New York at night was a little more hospitable at night than it was during the day. A little closer and he could focus on the source of the light, a little dimmer than he thought it would be: a building. A few more staggering steps forward, and he was close enough to read a sign.
Deoc an Doruis. He didn't even try to wrap his tongue around the phrase; instead he cursed and wondered just exactly where the hell he was, because even though he wasn't a hoity-toity educated guy, he knew enough to know those words weren't English.
Deoc an Doruis. A few more moments were wasted staring at the words, until a breath brought in a little too quick made his chest ache and throat swell. He let out a shallow cough.
Deoc an Doruis. English or not, it was, like anything was at this point, certainly better than standing in the middle of the street like a sick beggar. An open place meant a place to sit, and place to sit was a place to sit; by now he could not afford to be picky.
He could barely grip the doorknob with his raw knuckles and broken fingers, but with a little effort, he managed to make his way inside.
Deoc an Doruis was, to his surprise, a bar, and an occupied bar at that. Even in the morning's earliest hours, a sparse group of stray men and woman sat at the stools -- some old and wrinkled, others young, handsome ones -- while one with company sat at one of the small round tables. None looked up when he entered, not even the women he could see polishing glasses behind the bar. He continued to hobble in, not taking notice of the bar's knotted and grained woodwork, and took a seat at the front of the bar. Taking a few quick glances around, he noticed the clothing of the patrons looked dated and out of place; the bartender wore a long thick skirt and high-collared blouse, a crucifix hanging from her neck.
He shifted on his stool uncomfortably, still in enough pain that he could not make himself at ease, as a man a few stools away raised his glass.
"Ehy, curate(1)!" His voice was rough and slurred, obviously screwed. The woman looked up from the mug she was polishing.
"Yes, Mr. Donovan?" she replied, a little scathing. "Goin' home to your wife yet?"
"If I wanted to have my ear talked off, I would," the man growled. "Another rum."
The bartender rolled her eyes. "As you wish, Mr. Donovan," she deadpanned, taking the man's mug and heading for the tap. "I'm not the one paying." The conversation had revealed the Irish lilt in their voices, which made him wonder exactly where he was. As far as he knew, there was no Irishtown in New York (2). Setting down the glass hard enough that a little of the amber-brown liquid splashed over onto the bartop, the woman turned to him.
"So, what can I do for ya?" she asked, pulling a rag from the waist of her apron.
"Ehy, I'm payin' for whatcha spilled!" Mr. Donovan snarled from his stool.
"And I'm much obliged," she snapped back. Before turning back to him, she grabbed another dirty glass to polish. "Like I said, what's your poison?"
"I don't want anything to drink," he mumbled.
"No?" The surprise in her voice may have been forced, he wasn't sure. "You look like you've got a lot of forgetting to do, with those shiners you've got." He was lucky she didn't comment on the other bruises and cuts or, more importantly to him, his smell.
"That ain't the half of it."
"Running with the wrong crowd?"
"More like I ran into the wrong crowd."
"That's what you get for wanderin' into Catholic land," she scolded.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, and began to cough from the outburst.
"Your accent gives you away. You're an Orangeman, aren't ya?"
"A what?"
"An Orangeman. Don't play dumb; you know what I mean. A Protestant. An Englishman."
"I'm from New York."
"No one's from New York around here, and even if you are, you're a long way from home," she said to him. "You came from somewhere else originally, didn't ya? Y'must've."
"Probably."
"What's your family name?"
"Conlon."
The bartender let out a smile and set down her glass with a clatter.
"With an Irish name like that, I'd say you're right at home here, then." Her voice held traces of ebullience in it now. "Take a drink, would ya?"
"I said I didn't want one," Spot repeated firmly.
"You need some Irish whiskey. It'll help you bleed your troubles away." She took the mug from the counter and took it to the tap. "You look like you've been through hell. I mean it."
He wanted to derisively mumble back, "I have," but the door opened and the bartender was distracted when the form entered and approached the bar.
"Cathleen!" she said to the curate. This girl, younger than the woman she addressed, was dressed less conservatively and had a little too much cosmetic on her face for Spot's taste.
"Anne!" Cathleen snapped at her. "Get your tart ass out of here, now!" (3)
"Cathleen!" Anne whined, seeming embarrassed; a few of the patrons were looking up from their drinks and their company and staring at her. "It's Rosaleen when I'm on the turf." (4)
"Does this look like your turf, Anne?" When the younger opened her mouth to protest, she barked, "I refuse to call you Rosaleen. It's a disgrace to all Ireland. Get out of here, please, or else I'll be throwing you out."
"Fine, be that way, Cathleen," Anne huffed, throwing her red hair over her shoulder and storming out. Spot did not watch her go; turning that way hurt him too much. Instead he took the glass of Irish whiskey Cathleen had given him with his better hand and took a sip; it was warm and, though swallowing it was a little rough still on his injured throat, filled him easily.
"Who is she?" he asked Cathleen.
"A girl where she shouldn't be," Cathleen replied, her hands fluttering up anxiously to check that her brown hair hadn't fallen down from her head. "Thinks she can find herself some customers here…not on my watch, let me tell you that." She shook her head and sighed, dropping her hands. "How's the whiskey?"
"It's good," Spot said. "Thanks."
"It'll do good for your nerves. Want some High Toast with that, too? It might ease your mind."
"I…I don't use snuff."
"But you recognize the brand?" Cathleen raised an eyebrow.
"Since when do you offer snuff to patrons, Cathleen?" demanded a red- and round-faced man sitting alone at one of the small round tables loudly. "I've never gotten any!"
"I'll give you some when you take the pledge, Mr. O'Halloran," Cathleen smirked. (5)
"Then I guess I'll never be getting any snuff, then," Mr. O'Halloran replied, his chin bouncing with his chortling. Cathleen laughed along with him. Spot was glad for the distraction; snuff reminded him of big hands and dirty handkerchiefs, the empty tins, embossed with the name of the brand, his father always gave him when he was done with them. High Toast. Out of nostalgia and responsibility, he fought the pain enough to raise his glass and give his father a silent toast of his own. Whiskey and snuff were having opposite effects on him.
"For the love of Shannon's waves, go back to your glass-cleaning," grumbled a man sitting directly opposite Spot at the bar irritably. "Curates aren't supposed to socialize, and your jabbering is getting on my nerves."
"Take another drop, then," Cathleen said scathingly, approaching him. As she continued, she took his glass and refilled it. "Get yourself properly drunk so that you won't know who's saying what."
For a moment, the scene in front of Spot flickered. The thoughts of his father had reminded him of something, but the old man's remark had made him forget. Instead of trying to remember he took another drink, and when he set down the empty glass, Cathleen came over to refill it.
"An Irish lass shouldn't have to put up with bullshit from a man like him," she said to him quietly as he sipped his new glass of whiskey. For a moment, he felt like the pain in his hands was lessening.
"Then why do you?"
"Because that's the way things work around here. What, did they hit you upside the head along with in the face?"
"They hit me everywhere. It wasn't exactly a selective beating."
"Have they been beating you for a long time?"
"I'm usually the one doing the beating," Spot murmured. Cathleen looked very surprised by that statement. "What? So I'm scrawny. But I worked my way up to being able to kick anyone's ass in this city…as long as there isn't more than one going at me at once."
"How many were there?"
"Six."
"They look like they took the life out of you."
"I wouldn't be surprised. It hurts to sit and do anything. Hell, it hurts to do nothing."
Cathleen took his empty glass off the bartop. "You finished that one quick."
"It dulls the pain. A little…just enough."
"I'll get you another, on the house." She went for the tap. He knew Mr. O'Donovan was on his left, so he instead looked to his right, where another man sat two stools away. He nodded a hello; the other man smiled at him. He was old, years older than Cathleen, with a thin smile and long, wan face. He leaned over and said to Spot,
"I've been coming here nearly every day for fifteen years, and she's been here almost every day of that, and she was probably here even before that. Grew up here, that girl."
He wondered why the man was telling him this, such an arbitrary face, but Cathleen returned quickly enough that his ponderings did not get very far.
"I hope Father McDonough isn't bothering you," she said, setting down the drink in front of him.
"And every day she calls me that." The man smiled his thin smile. "And I'm not even a proper father. I dropped out of Rome's Irish College fifteen years ago." (6)
"Have a caraway seed, Mr. McDonough," Cathleen said, picking one out of her apron pocket and setting it in his open palm. "Go home. It's near morning by now." (7)
"And every night she sends me home." He finished with his somewhat drunken garbling, closing his hand around the seed and taking his hat. Out of his pocket he took a small gold coin and set it on the bartop. "G'night, Cathleen."
"Good night, Mr. McDonough."
After watching him go out the door, Spot pushed his drink back towards Cathleen.
"I shouldn't have any more."
"Take it." She smiled. "Make it your deoc an doruis."
"What?"
"Deoc an doruis. It's Gaelic. The farewell drink. That's what's on the sign, isn't it?"
The corners of Spot's lips tugged up in a strange smile and he reached out his hand. "Yeah, I read it."
As he took back his drink, he got a quick glance of Cathleen's dark brown eyes; their dull gleam revealed that, underneath all the wisecracks and quick-tempered remarks she had, any dreams or innocence she could have had were killed many years ago. Like everyone in that bar, she lived her life as a shell of the person she could have been, disappointed with her past but, because of her inability to learn from it, helpless to fix her future. And he…
And he…he had brought himself into another fight because of his attitude and arrogance and each fight, just like the last one, proved that he never learned. Like them, he could not understand his past, and now his future was lost. No amount of whiskey could change that.
He could not change that. He took one more swig.
As he let that liquid plummet down his throat, he felt the light of the bar growing dimmer. The stools and tables, the bartop and tap, the patrons and Cathleen, the mug of Irish whiskey…it all began to look indistinct to him, blurring in his vision, after a few moments more fading into nothing. He was alone. He had always been alone, the entire night. The bar was the street, the people ghosts of his own imagination to keep him occupied, the whiskey the blood he was bleeding onto the ground. The only truly real things were his wounds, which could not be healed by any illusion.
Take a drink. You look like you've got a lot of forgetting to do.
The Irish whiskey had bled more than just his troubles away, and the illusion of the tavern had done more than just ease his mind. It had eased him into this moment, and leaked away the pain until only a languid calm remained.
As it lurched up in his throat, he took a farewell drink of his own blood and let everything else, like he had let the bar, fade away, turning the rising sun into darkness.
(1) curate - Irish slang for bartender; screwed -- drunk
(2) Irishtown - a slum in Dublin
(3) tart - prostitute
(4) on the turf - prostitution
(5) take the pledge - give up drinking
(6) Rome's Irish college - a seminary in Rome for promising Irish priests
(7) caraway seed - to sweeten breath