Exit Laughing by Victoria Zackheim Page A

pockets, which he’d had a divil of a job drying out. But Alice couldn’t make out the words, because she couldn’t read or write.
    Read out loud, Gyles Pelly! everyone shouted. And let us see the pictures!
    “I have an awful pain in the head,” says Molly, touching my arm. “Would ye brew a pot of tea, Carrie?”
    “Jesus, Molly,” says Oona. “The suspense is killing me. Take off the toque, and ye’ll be fine. It must weigh a ton.”
    “I will not.”
    “I’ll be two minutes,” I say, tearing out of the parlor.
    I slam the kettle on the Aga, shovel Ashbys Irish Blend into the pot, and slosh milk into a jug. China cups, doily on a tea trolley, sugar in cubes. All presented the way Molly likes it.
    Rattle, rattle, rattle into the hallway, past the coat stand, past the grandfather clock, past the picture of the Immaculate Conception, and back into the parlor.
    “Here we are,” I say.
    “Thank God,” says Oona. “It took ye till tomorrow to get here. Will I pour? Come on, Molly, what was on those papers?”
    Gyles Pelly held them up for everyone to see, like he was the master at a school. There was jostling going on, and shoving, and pushing, but Molly and Bridie managed to edge forward, nevertheless. They saw pictures bordered with a chase of shamrocks, with harps and hills in the background. Irishmen held
shillelaghs
, or played pipes, and women in aprons were asking, “Will you go, or must I?” And one poster said: “An Irish hero! One Irishman defeats ten Germans.”
    And there was a poem:
    What have you done for Ireland?

Have you answered the call?

Have you changed the tweed for the khaki

To serve with the rank and file

As your comrades are gladly serving
,
Or isn’t it worth your while?
    Father Hegarty placed his hand on Alice’s shoulder. I’m sorry, he said. Seems Fergal signed up for the Irish Guards only a month ago.
    Thank you, Father, said Alice.
    She watched Fanny Lynch walk out of the door and into the night. Then Alice turned on her heels, and the crowd divided like the Red Sea before Moses to let her through. But she didn’t go back to her stool. She stood next to the Mullan boys instead, and asked them to play “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye.”
    And the pipes were coaxed to cry their tune, and the fiddle rippled faster than a mountain stream, and soon the bodhrán was thumping like a beating heart.
    And when they had finished, Alice said, That’s enough sadness for now, and she’d like the boys to play something merry the people could dance to.
    It wasn’t until well after the beer was passed around that anyone took to the floor. Daddy and Uncle Mickey were the first to start because Mammy urged them on. It’s what Alice wants to see, she said. The poor creature.
    AND one, two, three, they cried, flapping their elbows, and hammering their feet. Men trooped to the floor to join them, and soon Father Hegarty himself, who was well oiled by now, was spinning in circles like a whirling dervish. Molly couldn’t see too well over all the bobbing heads, but she was sure she saw Alice tapping her foot.
    When the cock crowed, stars blinked in a mauve sky, and it was well time to close the lid on Fergal Duffy by now. And Molly and Bridie ran to the casket, curious as to why they heard gasps, sighs, and a shock of exclamations.
God almighty!
Would ye take a look at that?
Dead as a doorknob Fergal might well have been, but a grin as wide as a tooth comb had taken form on his face.
    More like an expression of sheer mockery, according to Alice. And so far, no one had caught even a spark of rage in her eyes. But now they rolled, and her nostrils flared, and her face simmered and came to a boil, and she yelled,
Go n-ithe an cat thú, Fergus Duffy! Is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat!
And then may ye all rot together!
    And Alice took it upon herself to holler with joy, for the bastard was dead! And wasn’t she as free as a lark now?
    It took her long enough to realize that, said Ethan Fitton.
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