GOD BLESS YOU MARY MAGDALENE

60. GOD BLESS YOU MARY MAGDALENE:

"The palaver of your misdeeds would be quite infuriating and I wouldn't now intend to even get started with that" the man saying that to me was named Bill Leary and I'd grown used to him - as it were - as a denizen of this straw-bedecked sawdust-floored liquor-pit where various men came to pass their time each suffering perhaps from the same disease of the elbow as it were - induced by the rabid (and sometimes rapid too) lifting of ales drawn and ales bottled and the constant hum and undercurrent of their salacious conversation back and forth was after this long a time something I'd become quite steady with IN FACT to be sure I'd introduced once a joke which became as the joke-of-the-century to them all - I would enter the storm-fronted entry of this dark place and sidle up to Bill (who'd be wailing anew at something or other) and set him up with another saying "Put up another for Bill Leary on me for he's leery of paying the bill I see!" and the crowd would roar - ten or so reclusive drunks somberly lifting their wares - like some Irish choir of old with 'for he's leery of paying the bill we see' in unison and then laughter and the chorus descended to its riotous charm and this day Bill was saying to me "would'ja look at this shit - by Jeezus what're dey doing dese days for sure YOU tell me" and out before him I saw a skin magazine of one or another current vintage and he was staring at the photo spread of three young ladies - buffed and polished each - with fifteen tools and smiles to boot doing something to themselves and each other and he said "By God and Mother Theresa's fine ass I canna' myself believe what I'm seeing" and I replied "oh shut up Bill you old drunk fool those pictures ain't for you and kids these days anyway don't look at that stuff - they just as easily see it all move on their sweaty computer screens and the more are better for it I'm sure AND that stuff's now made for old geezers sleeping in barber shops and old patsies set drunk at a bar and just wishing - KIDS don't need that stuff and now neither do you" and he said "yeah I was just thinking though that 'old patsies set drunk at a bar' might include me ya' see and I would'na want my two daughters or me dear mother partaking of this and God Bless you Mary Magdalene" and I said back "Bill I think you left out your wife" and he said "oh no I made mention of Mary Magdalene now didn't I?" and right then I saw that he'd started crying - that wee little cry of drunken old men saddled with something called memory and guilt or whatever passes for that these days and I let him stew for the moment as I just said "Jeez' Bill don't let it get to you now YOU didn't after all take the pictures and those are mail-order titties anyway so what's the difference - have another beer" and next to me some other guy Wee Willie Jenkins or something piped in "well Christ Almighty that's why he's a'cryin ! fer HE DIDN'T take the pictures!" and they all roared again with a laughter not heard since this side of Killarney to the Rock of Gibraltor and even I joined in on that one and then Jenkins said again "you know just last night I wandered back home and I walked into the room and there was the wife asleep on the couch and an animal in my bed and I said I said to me'self 'what de Hell is THIS!' and a voice answered and said back to me 'well Willie the wife wanted to sleep and the fox just wants sex' and if that didn't beat all night drinking!" and they all started laughing again as the room itself seemed to take on the jovial traits of a bunch of men talented at praying for one more beer and the waitress came over - known to all as Maddie A - and said "well you fine gents are having a whale of a time I see" and someone shouted out "why don'tcha' come Maddie and wail on me!" and of course it all ensued again so that even the candle pots wavered with their thin little flames and I said "oh Maddie the boys are just having a time" and she laughed and said "I can see that then can't I" as she walked away again back towards the mirrors as everyone watched (the simple connundrum was that with the mirrors lining two walls as it were a person could see Maddie right then a'coming and a'going too from both front and sides) and a few too many ales and a few too much to do and a man's head wasn't sure then what he was seeing but Bill Leary by this time had made up his mind and said "just as it is I'll just let it go and take these pulp pictures from me a'fore I git mad" and he drank another furious glass and stayed down all the harder till another was called for and another past that - and the night wound on and people came and went - the loungers the ones on a date the freebooters and the already drunk and it seemed in the half-light that with every face I saw another story too both came and went like some vast mirrored subterfuge of life confused and addled by barrooms and mirrors all put together in a funhouse of shame somewhere on an island of doubt and dread and I saw Leary as the gatekeeper and was (myself then) leery of that and Wee Willie as the Master of Ceremonies too made me trepidate in my own amber liquid but the place was like home and I never felt ill at ease or unkind either and I said "Maddie give the boys here whatever they want and have a nightcap for yourself on me" and she did and I never felt better.