Like Most Others

Today started out like most other Sundays. Mid-morning, all the dogs wanted outside, so I let them out while I was preparing breakfast for the missus and me. A few minutes after the dogs went out, I heard what sounded like the spotted twins a-rasslin’ on the porch and didn’t pay it much attention. But a minute later, I heard Dixee’s shrill shriek of pain and went running. Jinx was holding her down with one paw and Bluebelle’s snout was buried in the fur on the right side of Dixee’s throat. When I burst out of the back door, bellowing and cursing, the twins scattered. Dixee was flailing around on the porch, trying to stand. I scooped her up and came inside, shutting the other two outside.

Down in the floor with her, I examined the little dog to see if I could see any injuries. There was no blood, but when I touched the right side of her neck, she jumped and shrieked in pain. My wife cautioned me to beware her sharp, splintery little teeth, and I heeded her warning. We’ve kept an eye on her all day today and she seems fine, though I’m sure she’s sore. Mrs. Orr gave her a canine pain relief tablet. Truth is, this incident was probably Dixee’s own fault. She has a history of instigating things, especially with Jinx. When he first came to live here, he was very friendly and open with the small dog, but Dixee was and is a quite jealous animal with an ill temper. She not only rebuffed his attempts to be friendly, but would leap up in his face, snapping and biting at him, driving him away whenever he came to my wife for affection. One day, he had had enough, and he whipped her pretty good before I could separate them. He never bit her, but he stomped her all over the place with his four big feet and slung her around and pretty much scared the living hell out of her, to which she reacted as if she had been disemboweled and then set upon by devils with pitchforks. Tortures of the damned, sir, as Anthony Burgess’s droog king Alex would have put it. Since then, there have been a few instances where she got a little too snippy and he has pounced on her with his front paws and slammed her to the ground, accompanied by savage growling and barking. These were pretty impressive and scary performances, but he’s never bitten her.

Bluebelle is another thing entirely.

Since she came here over a year ago, Bluebelle has pretty much ignored Dixee. She’s friendly with her in a very cool way on the rare occasions when Dixee approaches her, but she seems to sense that the little dog is treacherous, so she steers clear of her. Though I wasn’t out there to witness what happened this morning, I would wager that the two big dogs were tussling as they do, and Miss Bossypants decided she was going to play schoolmarm. She’s done this before when inside the house and we’ve always reprimanded her, causing her to stop and go lay in her bed and pout while the other two smirk and return to their play. Today, I imagine Dixee jumped between them and it just happened to be the wrong day to pull this kind of crap with Bluebelle. Jinx was clearly in on the deal, since I saw him holding her down with his paw, but I believe Bluebelle would have killed Dixee had I not gotten there in time. She’s a very aggressive fighter and has made the larger Jinx cry out in pain several times with her ferocious version of King of the Couch. Thus ends the halcyon days of unsupervised backyard time for the trio. Dixee made her bed; I hope she doesn’t have to die in it. I’ve been watching the spotted girl all day to see if she’s watching Dixee. It’s difficult to assess the presence of a grudge in such a guileless, sweet dog.

***

This past Friday marked 38 years since my father died. My mother saw his obituary in the local paper a day or two later, and called my sister to tell her. I can still remember getting the call from my sister, telling me that the mysterious, charismatic man we called Daddy had departed this life.

And tomorrow marks 20 years since Mrs. Orr’s beloved father died. My wife hadn’t been able to get him on the phone all day and decided we might need to drive out to his place and check on him. First, my wife called her brother and sister-in-law, who lived within walking distance, and asked them if they could check on PawPaw. Just a few minutes later, her brother’s wife called, sobbing, to tell us that they had entered his home and discovered that he had passed away. We got there within a half hour and I went back and talked to the paramedics on scene, who told me that my wife’s daddy had clearly had a massive heart attack and had died instantly. His passing left a void that has never been filled, and an ache that has never been relieved.

***

The other day while I was working here at home and Jinx was dozing in his bed at my feet, the dog scared the daylights out of me by leaping to his feet and offering a series of deep, menacing barks. I made my aching way up off the floor and to my feet and looked out the glass door to see two deer grazing just a few yards away in the yard. Through the course of the day, I saw several more, part of a herd that apparently decided to grace us with their elegant presence.

***

This Sunday has been spent like most others, and is ebbing like most others, and will soon be dimmed and done.

***

They Won’t Come Home Again

What with the passing of jobs and sashes and the close neighborhoods and communal tradition, the Belfast family can be unusually tight knit. Such a family were Francis and Joan Orr and their three sons. Their small row house on Alliance Road, which touched up against the Catholic Ardoyne, was a shade better than most. The Orrs were a bit different, in that they had nothing to do with politics, marching, or rioting. Malcolm, the oldest at twenty, was the only Protestant working for a Catholic construction firm in Anderstontown and was engaged to marry a Catholic girl.

He was extremely shy when they met. Malcolm didn’t drink, smoke, gamble, or use foul language. He had been made to feel like a son in her parents’ home, a compliment which the Orrs returned her in full measure. Pete, the middle son at nineteen, was completely taken by them too. The younger son, David, at seventeen was not quite buddying around with his brothers yet.

“The last night we saw each other,” Malcolm’s fiancee said, “we talked about going away. If we were to set up a home we didn’t want to do it here, because things had really gotten that bad. There was no longer any point in staying in Ireland. It was Malcolm’s mother and father and my parents who wanted us, you know, but he thought it would be better for us to go. We had to consider their feelings because the Orrs were the most wonderful family in the world.”

Pete and Malcolm left one evening for her home. She was expecting them, and when they didn’t arrive she phoned the Orrs. In Belfast an instant reaction of fear can be anticipated. Francis and Joan Orr set out to check other possible places the boys might have gone and, not finding them, reported to the police, then sat close to the television to hear the news. Ten to seven…ten to eight…nine o’clock. Between nine and ten there was nothing to report.

“We thought someone had kidnapped them then and given them a hiding or something like that,” Francis said. “I told the police I hoped they were found at a hospital just knocked down by a car…At half past eleven there was a news flash…two bodies had been found and I knew…in my heart…I knew it was my two sons.”

Joan Orr fortified herself. A Belfast mother learns to do that. “My boys have no sin to answer for,” Joan said. “They were very good to me…always giving me little gifts and we joked about a great deal. I just lived for them, which I think maybe has been my punishment. I thought too much of my own little family and not enough of the world outside of mine…my husband and I didn’t believe in this terrible division in religion that exists in Ireland…They welcomed my son into their home. They couldn’t have been any kinder to him, and the same with Peter’s friend. We didn’t object because Peter’s friend was a Catholic boy, because John is a very good boy, and if Peter was with Johnny, we knew he was in good company.

“This last couple of years Malcolm’s world was surrounded by his girlfriend. She was a very sweet little girl…but other than that, he loved to go fishing, and of course he had been steadily attending the technical college in his trade. Peter? Peter loved to tinker around with old cars and the usual football and pop music. Just ordinary boys. Attended their work very well…”

The bodies of Malcolm and Peter Orr were found dumped in a lane outside Belfast. They had been executed and lay face down in tall grass atop one another.

During the era of tragedy Joan Orr had felt deeply over every casualty but didn’t really know what it was like til then. There was an outpouring of sympathy from Catholic and Protestant alike, in the tragic replay of the Romeo and Juliet theme. The most moving gesture of all came from the parents of two young Scottish Fusiliers who had been similarly shot in the back of the head and dumped in the execution that hastened the end of the Chichester-Clark regime.

Francis Orr had known only hard work and family. To the day their sons died, his wife was at her factory job. He feels that there is no need of vengeance and even pities his sons’ killers, for he knows that here or elsewhere they will have that moment of facing their Maker.

The room was very simple, as their life had been. They didn’t photograph much, just a couple of old pictures that didn’t do the boys much justice. Young David entered the house, tried to force a smile, and retreated upstairs. She looked after him. “I used to think if anything happened to my sons I would know real hatred, but if leaves you so empty to think somebody else would die for killing your son. It doesn’t bring your son back. Revenge is empty. I feel sorry for them, for they are getting their punishment.” Her mind drifted. People should be allowed to pick their own friends without interference from outsiders.” She blinked listlessly and whispered, “I hope somebody will show me how to live again, because I don’t feel as if I want to.”

“I just couldn’t think that my sons were never going to walk into my house again. At times I never want to leave my house because I can walk into their bedrooms and feel near to them. I never want to leave Ireland because I couldn’t bear to feel I’d be leaving them. Sometimes I can go about my work and again, and the times they would be coming in at night and the times they would be getting up in the morning, I just don’t know how I get through those times because that’s when it hits me the hardest. Oh, yes, I go into their rooms. I still say good night to them and God bless…”

“I felt like running out into the middle of the road and shouting, ‘For God’s sake, stop it, it’s senseless’…I don’t know any gunman but if I could get through to his mind…the suffering that’s going on in this place…it’s like sitting back and watching a nation committing suicide and there’s not a thing you can do about it. You don’t want others to go through the desolations you are going through. I wouldn’t want anybody else to have it. Yesterday I was out and there were two little boys fighting in the street. I ran over and picked one up and said to the other, ‘Don’t hurt him.’ I can’t bear to see anybody hurting another human being now.”

Francis Orr had heard that two Catholic boys had been executed. His prayer has been constant that no revenge killing should take place for Peter and Malcolm. It would be the last thing his boys would have wanted.

“I want the people of England to bear with us a while longer and try to understand that we want to get the same life as they have in Oxford, Manchester, Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Surrey, and Devon. If we could have the same life…perhaps…perhaps if their troops could stay a little while longer…their sons…I pray for them at night. I hope the soldiers don’t die. I hate to hear guns firing. Every night I lie in bed and listen to fifty shots, a hundred shots, and I wonder. It’s depressing, so very depressing.”

They put off the funeral for as long as possible. They sat by the coffins and spoke to each other and their boys. And then it could no longer be delayed. He walked between their coffins, one hand resting on each son all the way to the cemetery. The house had been filled. She was there with her family and many other Catholic families. Protestants were there and many, many strangers and they prayed together.

For a passing moment there was a family of man in Ulster.

**

My Daddy is dead four weeks now, and that’s a month. He died on Wednesday morning at half six. He was beaten up in August because he tried to stop them from burning the houses in our street. He was in the hospital four weeks before he died. My Daddy said to me while he was living, he said, ‘you’ll grow up, you’ll be a man like me.’ He said because I bring dogs and cats into the house and so did he. He brought home fish and all. My Mommy said he died happy because he died in his sleep. When the smoke started coming from the walls of our house, we ran out and down the entry. My budgie and frogs and my cat and hampster were burned in the house. This is the second time we were burned out. When the slates were cracking with the heat, we thought it was guns and we cut over into another entry and went to our Granny’s house. My aunt gave me a dog. I call it Arco. I have a wishing well and I save up money in it. When I have three shillings, I’ll buy a goldfish.

— Letter from a Belfast child

excerpted from Ireland: A Terrible Beauty by Jill and Leon Uris (1975, Doubleday & Company, New York, NY; pp. 264-265, 271)

~ S.K. Orr