Priest

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The home for the bewildered is a black man may have saved my life.

In Ireland?. . A black saves your life, I mean how likely is that? Sign of the New Ireland and perhaps, just perhaps, indication of the death of the old Jack Taylor. As I’d been for five months, slumped in a chair, a rug over my knees, staring at the wall. Awaiting my medication, dead but for the formalities.

Gone but to wash me.

The black man leaned over me, tapped my head gently, asked,

‘Yo bro, anybody in there?’

I didn’t answer, as I hadn’t answered for the last months. He put his hand on my shoulder, whispered,

‘Nelson be in Galway this day, mon.’

Mon!

My mouth was dry, always, from the heavy dosage.

I croaked,

‘Nelson who?’

He gave me a look, as if I was worse than he’d thought, answered,

‘Mandela, mon.’

I struggled to lift my mind from the pit of snakes I knew were waiting, tried,

‘Why should. . I. . give a shit?’

He lifted his T-shirt — it had the Cameroon team on it — and I recoiled, the first stab of reality, a reality I was fleeing. His chest was raw, ugly, with the angry welts of skin grafts. White, yes, white lacerations laced his torso. I gasped, making human contact in spite of myself. He smiled, said,

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