His hands, held close to his chest, are formed into fists, in which he clutches lumps of grass, as if he’s trying to hang on to the world. But Whyte Earp has run out of time.
Whenever I recall his death, it’s this I remember most.
Winter now, the birds hungry in the bare sceach that line the long boreen.
A dull mist is everywhere.
I walk on.
He isn’t the real Whyte Earp of course. We call him that because he likes to tell us stories about the Wild West. Jim, his real name, never tires of telling us about Tombstone and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, about Billy the Kid and Jessie James, and how they were both Irish. Billy’s parents hailed from Cork. His real name was Henry McCarty. He killed twenty-two men by his twenty-second birthday.
By his side, his cowboy hat. For the first time I see fully his baldness. His eyes, still open, are fixed and motionless, his face contorted into a painful grimace. The bluebottles have laid their eggs, some of them already hatched, wriggling under the warm evening sun. Another day and they’ll be twice the size they are now. The last person to see him was Missus Slattery; that was Monday evening − three days prior.
I’ve never been alone with a dead man. I’ve never even seen a dead man, except in a coffin.
Daylight’s fading fast, the vast purple illuminating the evening sky, darkening. The rest of the search party can’t be far away. Normally, I would be too embarrassed to cry out in a loud voice, but necessity and adrenaline make it easier.
‘Hey Hey hey over here – over here’. My voice echoes. I know this land, every ditch, every tree, every rabbit hole, every stream, every drain and hollow, the paths worn by cows, those worn by men, the tracks of the hares, where to get crab apples, wild plums, horse chestnuts, hazel nuts, where to get the best hazel sticks (from which I make bows and spears). My territory extends for miles in every direction. From here, on clear days, shimmering far in the distance, you can see the Galtee mountains, further on the flat lands of Kilkenny. To the east the Devil’s Bit − where the devil supposedly took a bite out of the mountain and dropped it in Cashel, from which The Rock of Cashel was built − is shrouded in dark blue.
Again, I look at him, crumbled up like he’s in the womb, child-like and helpless once more, leaving the world just as he came into it, except this time alone on the side of a hill; no haze or blaze of bullets, no four slugs from a forty-four− just plain old boring death snuck up on him, cut him down, and for three days she’s held him here on this secluded hillside.
He went to Tombstone once, in the seventies, with his brother Pat. There’s a sister out in Botswana on the missions. The oldest brother Toby died two years ago. Under the summer sun Toby liked to nap against the butts of horse chestnut or sycamore trees, those having the best shades. Walking past him, along the back roads, he would shout out a warning to us to “mind the motors”. Jim, like Pat, drives a black Volkswagen Beetle. You can hear the rattle of that old engine and know it’s him from miles away.
My shouts have started a chain reaction; the quietness of the evening reverberates with excited voices. Within minutes, everybody has arrived, and all, upon seeing him, bless themselves.
Who found him they ask.
I can’t help but feeling proud when they point or say my name.
My father picks some dock leaves and wipes the flyblows from Jim’s face, then one eye at a time he closes the eyelids. When he’s done he blesses himself.
Philly Ryan says it was a heart attack. Others nod in agreement.
‘Look at his hands clutched to his chest and his fists clenched tight.’
‘Massive heart attack,’ my father says. Being the local Sheriff, so to speak, he’s seen many of the dead: car crashes, fires, suicides, and plenty of plain old natural deaths like heart attacks.
‘Didn’t smoke much, only the pipe, nor drink much either,’ remarks Martin Quinn.
‘He was an awful man for the butter,’ says Pat Purcell.
‘Ah, it was in them,’ said Phil Nesbit, the oldest man here, ‘didn’t his father die the same way.’
His words have an air of authority; the autopsy is complete. Talk turns to how they will get the body down. Even in summer it’s difficult to get a tractor up here, the road being too steep and uneven. In the end, it’s decided to carry the body to the nearest lane which is known to everybody as the high car road. To carry the body a good strong blanket will be needed, so my friend Brian and my younger brother are chosen to run to get one.
The men smoke as they stand around waiting. I want to smoke too, but I’m still too young to smoke in front of my father. He doesn’t know it, but he’s my greatest source of cigarettes. Others are sent on different errands but I’m allowed to stay with the men, maybe because it was I who found him. Listening to the men talk, I can’t keep my eyes off of the dead man, the grass in his hands, the grimace on his face.
‘He was fond of rambling; wasn’t unusual for him to go missing for a day or two.’
‘Kept to himself mostly, but liked the odd large bottle.’
‘The sister will have to be notified and the funeral won’t be held until she gets home.’
‘Pat’s on the way from Limerick.’
Up until a few years ago, Jim and his brothers still cut their hay by hand, turned it by fork, then trammed it − work that we loved. We’d spend days in the meadow with them. When the hay was ready to be brought in, we’d sit on top of the trams on the horse n’ car, enjoying the rest and the long slow rides. All the other local farmers had long ago gotten tractors and switched to making silage. In the evenings, after long hours of toil, we’d sit in the shade of a grassy ditch, the men drinking large bottles of Guinness and Smithwicks, while we downed bottles of lemonade with our sandwiches.
When my friend Brian and my brother return with the blanket, they inform us that Mikey Ryan is on his way with the tractor and transport box. The evening drips with peace, not a sound to be heard, except the birds, and sometimes in the distance, the deep rumbling of engines, where men are still working at the silage. Frozen and rigid, the body is manoeuvred into the blanket with great effort. The men huff and puff their way down the hillside towards the high car road taking turns holding corners of the blanket. Carrying his hat, I lead the way to the gate and then downwards to the boreen.
By the time we get back to the house the local women have gathered in Jim’s neighbours’ – the Whelan’s – house. No time is wasted; as if rehearsed all the adults fall into a role. From here Bridget Whelan, Missus Slattery, and others direct the men to bring the body into a back room. The last job the men have is to straighten out the body. Judging from the sounds that drift into the living room, it’s no easy task. After this the women take control of the body, and the men retire to the living room and start into the sandwiches. Bottles of Guinness and ale are laid out on the table. Danny and Philly Ryan have opened a bottle of whiskey and are filling glasses.
The women, my mother included, get ready basins of hot water and cloths. The men have no stomach for such work. Young Peter Whelan and I are sent to fetch his suit.
In Jim’s kitchen, an old-style open fire over which hang pots for cooking and a big black kettle. In his small upstairs room, two enamel piss pots, both half full with yellow urine. I take a fag from my shirt pocket; one I’ve stolen earlier from my father. Back and forth Peter and I pass it, filling the small room with smoke. We locate his suit in the closet near the door. A wooden cross above the head of the bed, the Sacred heart on the wall. Looking out his window, strange old horse pulled harvesting machines litter the yard like skeletons and ghosts from a different world.
Soon after we return the men are called to carry the body out and lay it on the kitchen table. An expression of peace now fills his face. His hands, no longer formed into fists, are laid one on top of the other. In place of the grass there are now black rosary beads. The remaining strands of his hair are brushed carefully across his baldness. The brother Pat from Limerick announces his arrival with the rattle of the old Volkswagen Beetle. Again, I think of Whyte Earp and Tombstone as I look enviously at Jim’s hat on the table wondering who will get it. Could you wear a dead man’s hat? Why not, I answer myself, why not? They do it in the Westerns and Jim loves nothing better than Westerns.
As the darkness falls and the last light dwindles more and more cars arrive bringing with them more supplies. Men talk and drink while mothers and grandmothers carefully observe. A giddy excitement fills the house. Like vultures my friends and I keep our eyes peeled for stray bottles and unattended cigarette boxes. Outside in the empty cowshed we smoke and pass around a large bottle of ale. The taste is bitter but in the bitterness there’s something worth chasing.
The Priest arrives and the Rosary is chanted in unison by fifty or more voices. I mumble along unaware after a while of the words coming from my mouth but caught up in the rhythm and the feeling of something far more powerful than the words.
After that we mostly sit round and catch snippets of stories about Jim.
‘He’d been to every All-Ireland since 1967.’
‘Didn’t he miss 75?’
‘That’s right, the car broke down in Kildare and they gave two days on the beer.’
‘He was never much of a drinking man. A few bottles is all.’
‘His father’s people were from Limerick.’
‘Wouldn’t spend much.’
‘Who’s in line for it ?’
‘Will have to be the brother shur.’
‘You wouldn’t know.’
‘Quarer things have happened.’
No one knew exactly what age he was and that was a source of great debate for a while. ‘Sister Bridie’s a fierce intelligent woman – shur they all were.’
‘Like a crow, he was. Always watching.’
‘You wouldn’t know where you’d run into him.’
‘Nocturnal.’
‘Got that from the mother’s side. The O’Sullivan’s were never short of oddness.’
‘He couldn’t have went in the bed like the rest of us.’
‘No begor, that was him all right. He’d have to go differently.’
‘No better man.’
Phil Bourke reminisces about the old dances they held at the cross of Shevry, known locally as The Platform of Shevry. The Platform referred to the wooden stage on which the people danced. Shevry in Irish is Shevrie, which translates to English as King of the fairies.
Mick Welch is persuaded to give The Platform, a poem his uncle wrote. Sometimes he sings it, sometimes he recites it, depending on how many bottles he’s downed. His high tenor voice, shakey at first, soon settles and finds its rhythm.
We’ll sing again in merry strain a rhyme in praises high
Of the dance board fine beside the Line near the Cross of Shevry.
In an old sand pit we’ve made a hit, ‘tis the centre of attraction
From a place where the crowds come here I’ll give you first a fraction.
The Lacken ‘hopes’ from by the slopes come out the long boreen
O’er fence and drain and winding lane they come out from Rusheen.
From Crough and Sceach and Knocklough the youth come hurrying down
From Knockmaroe, Knockeravoola too, and the faithful few from Glown.
The verses roll on, thirteen in total. The platform is long gone but the Fairy Fort remains. On Halloween nights we go there after the bonfire to scare ourselves silly.
The hours pass quickly, marked out by talk, drink and songs. By the time my mother gets my father to leave he’s more than a little drunk. As usual, he can’t stop talking about the things he talks about when he’s drunk; great hurlers and stories we’ve heard a hundred times. Leaving the kitchen, I turn to take one more look. Seeing him on the table, I’m stuck with the thought that sooner or later, like us, everybody will leave and he will be alone again.
My father tells us again the secret of drunk driving is to close one eye. But sober or drunk he’s always been a careful driver. Sitting in the back beside my sisters and brothers, I recall the smell of Jim’s urine in his small room upstairs, the glorious purple and red sunset, the flyblows in his nose and eyelids, his large eyebrows and the hair protruding from his nose and ears, the cracking and straining of his rigor mortis body as they tried to straighten it, the black rosary beads wrapped round his hands, the stale taste of ale in my mouth, the curious desire for more. I start thinking what would happen if his body was never found. At first, this seems terrible but by the time we get home I’ve reconciled myself with the idea. It might be the most natural thing in the world; his body would fertilize and feed the earth and the animals; he would live on in the form of grass and earth and atoms. This works for a while but trying to sleep later on I can’t help but thinking that death is nothing but an awful lonely business.
Two days later they bury him with his hat on. When I inquire about it, Lena Whelan says it was only right:
‘He was always shy of his baldness and wouldn’t like to be without his hat.’
I need to turn back as it will be dark soon.
Pain in my knee, pain in my hip I walk on.
There’s nothing much left of Whyte now, nor his world, nor those who inhabited it, only his bones cleaned in the ground, an overgrown boreen, rusting half buried Volkswagen Beetles and Morris Minors and a ghost filled hovel with crumbling moss-and-ivy covered walls and haunted empty windows.
I walk on through the mist and drizzle.
It will be dark soon. 
David Brennan’s novel Upperdown (2019) was published by époque press and is available here.
Learn more about David on the Contributors page.
(Photo: RichKnowles/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
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- The Last Cowboy by David Brennan - July 27, 2023