101

Fegan couldn’t be sure what got him moving. Had something shifted inside, telling him he wanted to live? Perhaps it was the fear of burning, though he knew the smoke would get him long before the flames. Whatever it was, it came with a burst of clarity, but something had preceded it. A shape in the swirling darkness, a woman with a baby in her arms, a woman with a soft, sad smile who had once shown him mercy. For a moment, he had thought she had come to welcome him to her place, wherever that was, but then she was gone and he wanted to move, tired as he was.

His legs carried him out to the corridor as his hands sought the walls for support. He went for the light, but stumbled over something hard and angular. The Bull’s upended wheelchair, he realised as he untangled himself from it. As he crawled, he found a pair of legs, one stiff and unmoving, the other pushing at the floor.

Fegan saw the broad back and heavy shoulders, the meaty hands clasping at something. He threw himself on Bull O’Kane’s back, snaked his arms around his huge chest, and pulled.

The old man screamed as Fegan dragged him deeper into the black. The smoke tore at Fegan’s eyes and throat, but he kept pulling as O’Kane struggled. The clarity and strength that had come upon him in Marie’s dying room began to slip away, and he pulled harder again, O’Kane’s weight wrenching at his arms.

O’Kane reached up, tried to find Fegan’s eyes. Instead, Fegan closed his teeth on the thick fingers and bit down. O’Kane squealed like a pig in an abattoir as the blood in Fegan’s mouth mixed with his.

The heat grew until Fegan smelled burning hair and felt the skin on the back of his neck blister. Through the blackness he saw flames rise up from the stairwell behind him. He hauled O’Kane closer, fighting the rolling waves of fatigue and nausea, until he found the lip of the top step under his foot.

O’Kane cried out as he saw the fire below piercing the smoke to illuminate them both. He reached up, trying to get hold of the railing, but Fegan turned his weight towards the drop. With one last push, he threw O’Kane down towards the flames, but the Bull’s fingers clasped at Fegan’s clothes. The world turned and tumbled, wooden steps rushing up to batter Fegan’s shoulders and ribs. His hand found the railing as O’Kane’s bulk carried him on through the smoke to the burning pit below. The fire swallowed the Bull along with his screams until the only sound was its own roar.

Fegan willed his legs to move, his arms to drag him up the steps. He tried to breathe, but his ribs howled as they flexed, and he knew they were broken. Up above, through the smoke, there was light. He crawled towards it, pushing back against the pain until it evaporated. The light brightened as he climbed. How many steps had he fallen down? Surely not this many. The steps seemed to go on and on until he stopped counting them.

Still he climbed until the light was everywhere, and he had forgotten everything he’d ever known except a golden day in Belfast, not so long ago, when Ellen McKenna held his hand.

Fegan fell, hard wooden steps pressing against his cheek and his chest, soft as air. Sleep beckoned like warm arms. He listened, the whole wide world rushing past his ears.

In a strange and simple realisation, he knew his heart had stopped. The whistling in his ears swelled and lightning flashed across his vision. Faces formed in the black river that raged about him, some kind and loving, others frightened and hateful. His mother passed among them, and he remembered the rocks by the Portaferry shore, her spinning in circles while his hands clung to hers, lighter than air, his feet free of the earth as they both giggled, and he grew dizzy and frightened, but the laughter was bigger, and they spun and spun and spun for so long he thought they would spin for ever, but then the lightning came again and that was all.

Gerry Fegan met eternity with sun and salt air on his skin.