style="font-size:15px;"> Centered in the surrounding darkness of the fjord, the ship’s security and navigation lights give it the incandescent appearance of an alien spacecraft, strobing and numinous with first-contact immanence. Its pallid occupants have come among us with their refined metabolisms and liminal communiqués from some higher-order teleology beyond our imagining. And while they are unlikely to play out the classic scenarios—stripping the planet of mineral resources, conscripting our womenfolk into some ghoulish reproductive project—they have already started to assimilate a whole culture. With all media commandeered and their names on everyone’s lips there is already something worshipful in our gaze. We are ready to move on, beyond our childhood’s end, into some transcendent forgetting of ourselves.
FRANK LALLY
I drive out once a week to the Killary to look out at that ship. Usually in the middle of the week when it’s quiet because at weekends you can’t get parking along that road with all those tourists taking pictures and looking out with binoculars . . .
I try and picture JJ out there on that ship, JJ and those other lads wired up to those machines and somewhere along the way I’ve found myself praying for him.1 He’d get a laugh out of that, the same JJ. Everyone knows that he himself has no truck with that kind of thing and to tell the truth it was news to me that I did. It just happened one day when I was standing on the old pier looking out at him. Without thinking about it or anything I said a small prayer for him and it was over and done with before I realised it. It was news to me that I believed in God; I’ve never given that sort of thing a lot of thought. As long as a man has his health and everything around him is going middling then it’s up to him to get on with it and make the best of things, that’s what I’ve always thought. But I surprised myself that day standing there with that little prayer for him. Now, and for whatever reason, every time I go out there to look at him I always find myself saying a prayer. JJ needs all the goodwill he can get and if people like me don’t do it, who will?
People will tell you that JJ was a lucky lad, a lucky child having the life he had compared to what it might have been; that’s one of those careless things people say without thinking. But he wasn’t and he isn’t. JJ’s never had a day’s luck in his life. Anything that was given to him with one hand was taken away with the other. You’ve only to look back at all the time that lad spent in hospital when he was a child or to that day in the church to see that he would never have a day’s luck in his life . . .
There were only a few of us in the church that day. It was the middle of a Sunday afternoon and JJ and Owen were making their debuts as altar boys. It was a bit of an occasion, as you can imagine, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there. Nor would Anthony either who was beside me in the seat. It was afternoon benediction and the idea was that the two boys would have their first try-out in front of a small audience; if anything went wrong there wouldn’t be too many people to see it and not much embarrassment for the lads. All I remember hoping was that it would be over quickly and that we’d get away to watch the second half of the match—Mayo were playing Sligo that day in the Connaught final.
A few minutes before three JJ walked out of the sacristy carrying this long taper to light the candles on the altar. There was these two candelabra things at either end of the altar, ten candles on each of them reaching up to the centre in a kind of arch effect. JJ lit the right-hand one first, standing and leaning on his tiptoes to reach the last two or three. Then he went over to the one on the left. He lit the first five or six and was stretching up to the top ones when it happened. The cuff of his surplice must have caught on one of the lower candles. As quick as lightning this orange flame shot up his sleeve towards his shoulder. JJ jumped down from the altar shaking his arm, trying to put out the flame. Of course this only made things worse, fanning and spreading the flames to the rest of his body. I was out of the seat in a shot, racing up the aisle, pulling off my jacket. JJ was now dancing around in front of the altar, waving his arms and screeching, almost covered in flames—you’d think to look at him he’d just grown these big orange wings. I threw the jacket over him and wrestled him to the ground. It seemed like all this went on about half an hour but from the moment he walked out with the taper in his hand to the moment I put the jacket over him I’d say less than a minute and a half had passed. When I turned him over on his back he was all black and smoking. His surplice had been burned away entirely but as far as I could see there didn’t seem to be too much wrong with him. He just lay there black and charred with smoke rising off him. Anthony pushed me aside and Father Scallen came charging out of the sacristy. Anthony had JJ sitting up with his arms around him.
“JJ!” he shouted. “JJ!” He put his hand under his chin and turned his face up. “JJ . . . !”
JJ just sat there wreathed in smoke and I saw that the hair on the side of his head and across his scalp had been badly singed.
“Stand back, let him have some air.”
Maureen pushed into the crowd, shoving us aside. “Get him something to drink. Owen, get him a glass of water.”
JJ was sitting there with no sound out of him. There were these long weals along the backs of his hands but they didn’t seem to be giving him any pain. Maureen took his hands, turned them over and lifted his face so that she could see the marks on the side of his head.
“This child needs the hospital,” she said. “These hands are going to blister. Get this black thing off him.”
Anthony sat in the back of the car with JJ on his knees wrapped in a coat. Maureen sat in beside me and I put the boot down. We were lucky it was a Sunday afternoon—there wasn’t any traffic on the road and we pulled into casualty about thirty minutes later. The nurses whisked JJ away with them and Maureen strode off behind them telling them she was his aunt.2 I was alone in the corridor then with nothing to do except get a cup of tea and try to read the Sunday papers. There were only a few people in the coffee shop—a few patients going around in dressing gowns and a few gasúrs running about the floor with bags of crisps and ice lollies. Maureen and Anthony came back after about two hours. They looked a bit happier in themselves.
“He’s settled now,” Maureen said. “He’ll sleep for the rest of the day.”
“What did they say?”
“They said he was a lucky lad. Just his hands and his hair. They think he might have some scorching on his lungs but they’ll do tests on that tomorrow.”
“Did he say anything himself, did he talk?”
“He said a few words. Just that his hands were sore and that he had a hot feeling in his chest. But it doesn’t seem to be troubling him too much. I think they are more worried about the shock than anything. They bandaged his hands and put something on his head. He’s sleeping now.”
Anthony pulled in beside me. “I’ll come over in the morning to check on him. I suppose there’s nothing else we can do for him this evening. The nurse said he would sleep till morning.”
“There is nothing we can do,” Maureen repeated. “I’ll come over with you in the morning if you like.”
I could tell Anthony was glad she’d said that. He drew his hands across his face and clasped them on the table in front of him. Then he spread them wide and looked at both of us. “Of all the things. And in a church too, of all the friggin’ places.”
I had no answer to that nor did anyone else either I’d imagine. I gathered up the paper and made to go. “It’s just one of those things, Anthony. Nothing you or I or anyone else could have done.”
Maureen and Anthony walked ahead of me to the car. A red-faced
