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As a young woman, old Mrs Coogan reloaded rifles in the War of Independence and ran ammunition for the Flying Column of the Third Brigade. She took a bullet to the shoulder from a British Vickers machine gun for her efforts. She was heralded as the brave epitome of the new Irish republic, and missed her image featuring on the nation’s first five pound note by only two committee votes.
Undeterred, she was responsible for bringing electricity across the mountain. She ran the post office and the village phone. She was mother to fourteen then widowed early, but observed an indefinite deep mourning for Mr Coogan after he passed, becoming grandmother to forty-seven, great grandmother to nineteen and great great grandmother to seven. She was the church’s sacristan for thirty-six years before handing the responsibility down to her youngest daughter, Bunny Coogan, and throughout her life she used her prominence in the community to become an adamant voice against blasphemy and contraception, divorce, abortion, gay marriage, rights for the transgendered, denying something so hard and so furiously that she killed it out of existence then when it was dead she said See, it’s dead anyway.
And in her one hundredth and ninth winter, having seen eleven popes come and go, old Mrs Coogan ascended to the Kingdom of Heaven to live with Holy God after some dirty, stinking, nasty, evil, despicable, revolting, out-and-out scumbag animal went and shat down her chimney, killing her from the fright of it.
Tom Phelan, owner of Phelan’s, the only pub in Ballybalt, went across Bridge Street to where old Mrs Coogan was laid out for the wake, one of the first to pay respects, and returned saying he never before seen such a frozen expression of terror on a body, saying, ‘It won’t be on any fivers anytime soon. I can tell you that much for nothing.’ Tom Phelan further reported to the drinkers in Phelan’s that Bunny Coogan was blaming a murderer—a murderer she accused he himself of harbouring in his pub.
And it shook Ballybalt. People found it tough to take. To have somebody walking amongst them, capable of perching themselves bare-arsed on the chimney of a house so pious, bearing such malice against the living saint of a woman who made her home there, a woman who gave so much, not just to Ballybalt but to the nation, and then to shit down her chimney—it was just tough seeing humanity at that low a level. And with only a few days until Christmas, there were whispers of threading lightly with talk of Santa Claus this year, it perhaps in bad taste talking about who or what might be coming down the chimney with so many grieving Coogans around.
‘Whoever did it will get their comeuppance,’ people said.
‘What can you do?’ they asked.
So the trees stayed lit, and the stockings stayed hung, but with their children tucked in and told not to worry, that everything was okay, that they were safe, the over-anxious fathers of Ballybalt went outside to grease the drainpipes and fearful mothers burnt plastic in the fires to push smoke out their chimneys as black as a protestant’s heart.
The next morning, after the same dirty, stinking, nasty, evil, despicable, revolting, out-and-out scumbag animal had went and done another shit down Bunny Coogan’s chimney this time, it kicked off something cataclysmic. Bunny Coogan raged down Bridge Street and into the Garda barracks like a chemical fire to pin the sergeant against a filing cabinet.
‘Word has it you were in Phelan’s all yesterday,’ Bunny Coogan shouted into his face.
‘Half what I ever solved was in Phelan’s over a pint.’
‘It’s because of Phelan’s it does happen in the first place.’
‘They’re bad in Phelan’s, Bunny. But they’re not this bad now. I’ll find who’s responsible and I’ll stop them.’
‘You’ll do more than stop them.’
‘What more do you want?’
‘I want them charged.’
‘Charged with what, Bunny?’
‘With murder is what—what else?’
‘For shitting down a chimney?’
Bunny Coogan, diabolical when she wanted to be, grabbed hard the sergeant’s bollocks. ‘Listen to me you worthless sack of shite. Come Christmas, if this filthy fucking animal is not found and charged with the murder of my mother, I’ll be making some inquiries of my own.’
‘Bunny, please.’
‘And we both know what I’ll find, don’t we?’
‘We know,’ said the sergeant. ‘We know, we know.’
An hour later the sergeant drove down Bridge Street, hoping whoever shat down the Coogan chimneys would jump in front of the squad car, trousers around his ankles and a soot ring the shape of a chimney pot on his arse.
‘How’s your bollocks, sergeant?’ the Coogans shouted into the squad car at him. They were Coogans from all over the world who’d already took international flights and were piling into Ballybalt for the funeral, sporting funky-looking haircuts and dainty rig-outs en vogue in some other place, going inside the wake of old Mrs Coogan to say their goodbyes—London Coogans, Toronto Coogans and Melbourne Coogans, double-barrelled Coogans and Coogans married out of the name but not the square Coogan face, every one of them coming out worse for wear after seeing old Mrs Coogan laid out.
The next morning. On Christmas Eve no less, and for a third consecutive day, shit was found in a Coogan fireplace.
It was war.
The Coogans sealed up their chimney pots with super-expanding foam. A lookout rota was drawn up. They were under attack and Ballybalt was either with them or against them. However. It had become apparent to the rest of Ballybalt that the perpetrator was compelled towards Coogan chimneys and so far, only Coogan chimneys. Taking the side of the Coogans might result in shit coming down everybody’s chimney, so folk kept their heads low. In turn, what was set to be a funeral to break all records, old Mrs Coogan’s funeral did not even fill Bridge Street with mourners. The Dungarven florist did not need two trips to bring all the wreaths over the mountain. There was not standing room only up at the church and every empty pew came as a slap to Bunny Coogan’s face, finishing her mother’s eulogy by cancelling Christmas. Oliver Cromwell wouldn’t have been in it with the woman.
‘Until this animal is apprehended, stop all the turkeys and puddings.’
Children began crying in the congregation and Bunny Coogan thought good, that this was more like it.
‘Santa Claus, Bunny,’ whispered the priest.
‘There is no Santa Claus!’
The final nail in the coffin came when a representative from the post office said after the funeral that perhaps now wasn’t the best time to put old Mrs Coogan’s face on the new seventy cent stamp—what with the controversy.
‘She missed the fiver by two votes and now she’s missed the seventy cent stamp because some dirty savage went and took a shit down her chimney? A woman who took a bullet to the shoulder from a British Vickers machine gun for this country? Not right,’ the Coogans said. ‘This is not right.’
And Ballybalt said no, it wasn’t right, wasn’t right at all, then made for Phelan’s where Tom Phelan was sticking to Christmas Eve tradition and begrudgingly handing out free beer as a thank-you for everyone’s year of drinking, and the punters settled down to get Christmas Eve drunk. Midnight Mass came to a close and the late crowd came in. People got chatting to people they hadn’t seen this long time. The fire was crackling, the pool balls were clacking and the large whiskies were like a hot poker stoking Ballybalt’s belly coals, Phelan’s heaving, the mistletoe hanging, glasses clinking, and life was grand, until the sergeant burst through the pub door in full uniform, Bunny Coogan at his side, scowling, throwing looks about the place that near froze the beer.
No Coogan had set foot in Phelan’s since old Mrs Coogan’s grievance with the condom machine in the men’s bog, chock-a-block with johnnies, advertisements on its front declaring its insides rubbery, ribbed and studded for her pleasure. ‘The rotting core of this town,’ said old Mrs Coogan. And a grudge festered. And this was Ballybalt, where grudges were handed down through the generations like heirlooms. If a person had no property, no money, no prospects, no intelligence, no personality and no luck, at least by Christ they had their mother’s grudge to warm the cockles of their hearts in the cold and desolate wilderness of existence.
‘Now,’ said the sergeant. ‘Everybody behave because this is serious. As you all may know, three households have been violated in three consecutive days. It’s causing considerable distress to the Coogan family and this has to stop. It is very serious. This person we’re after has been profiled, and will be male aged between seventeen and forty-nine. So I’ll be looking at this pub and the people in it very closely from now on. He’ll obviously live in the local area. He’ll be a sociopath, meaning he’ll have several personality disorders manifesting in antisocial behaviour and he’ll more than likely have a drink problem. He’ll also have a problem with gambling and promiscuity. Perhaps occasional substance abuse. He’ll be a pathological liar and prone to outbursts of rage.’ The sergeant paused to compose himself for the next bit. ‘And he’ll have had a number of failed sexual relationships.’
Bunny Coogan gave a disapproving look at the word sexual having to be used in the sergeant’s profile.
‘He’ll have a superficial charm and be skilled in manipulation which helps him get away with all of this carry-on. And finally, he’ll have defecated in public before.’
There was a moment for it all to sink in before Phelan’s erupted in so much laughter that the sergeant and Bunny Coogan could have surfed out on it.
‘I confess,’ shouted about ten of the cunts offering their wrists for shackling.
Another ten of them suggested the sergeant himself was the culprit.
‘Lock him up anyway!’ the rest of them shouted pointing to the man beside them.
‘Christ, there’ll be nobody left,’ Tom Phelan said.
‘You’re all a pack of animals!’ Bunny Coogan shouted to which Phelan’s retaliated with hee-haws, growls and turkey gobbles, and then outside on Bridge Street, there was a pursuit going on, and it hopped along the rooftops this pursuit until there was a sudden clatter up on the roof of Phelan’s.
The snug door burst open and a crusade of Coogans stormed inside armed to the teeth with the lost arsenal of Ballybalt’s Flying Column of the Third Brigade. It seemed Bunny Coogan had inherited the information of the arsenal’s whereabouts from her mother. The Coogans overturned tables and bullied auld lads from their chairs and pointed more than a dozen Howth Mausers and three British Lee Enfield rifles towards the ceiling, locked and loaded, poised and ready.
‘It’s the fucker who’s been shitting down our chimneys,’ the Coogans told Bunny Coogan. ‘You have nowhere to go now you dirty bastard!’
‘Hay!’ Tom Phelan shouted. ‘Don’t shoot them guns in here.’
‘Put them guns down,’ the sergeant said.
‘You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you, sergeant,’ Bunny Coogan said to take charge of the situation, her eyes the colour of murder. ‘Everybody will be quiet if they know what’s good for them or I swear to Christ I’ll have every last one of you shot.’
Nobody dared stir.
There was a creak in the ceiling that may have been a footstep. Weight was added to that creak and it was almost certainly a footstep. Bunny Coogan motioned to the Coogans to circle beneath it.
Bunny Coogan raised a hand to tell the Coogans to ready themselves to fire. There was another creak, and then another.
‘Hold on, Bunny!’ Tom Phelan shouted as he came out from behind the bar, the big thick donkey head on him terrified for his roof. ‘Don’t shoot them fuckin guns in here.’
But the footsteps up there started louder and quicker.
‘He’s trying to get away,’ the Coogans shouted and that was good enough for Bunny Coogan.
‘Fire!’ she shouted.
Tom Phelan tried to catch the moment to stop it but the Coogans did as the Coogans were told and the moment maddened and all hope was lost for catching it in the scream, the triggers long since pulled and the ceiling awash in flame.
And as a blood rain began to drip down into Phelan’s from the roof above, still the Coogans were not satisfied, Bunny Coogan ordering a reload and another round of firing into the heavens, this second assault collapsing the ceiling rafters altogether to land down onto the floor of Phelan’s a bullet-riddled Santa Claus — shot through and stone fucking dead.
(c) David McGrath, 2020
David McGrath is the author of one novel published in 2015. He has another two in the pipeline. The first is a fictionalised take on Boris Johnson’s 2020. It’s fucked up. The above story, An Irish Christmas, is from the second, the novel itself called The Donkey Christ of Ballybalt. It’s even more fucked up. He’s not a well man.
That was fucking great
Posted by: michael mclaughlin | Jan 03, 2021 at 07:46 PM