The Butcher’s Arm crash, it wasn’t as if you’d hear it over a pint or the
garden wall.
He had only the one arm, you
see—that we all knew. It wasn’t as if
Drogheda were a big place—even then with the shipyards full of steel and
flash. Now, you could spit from the
tower at noon and n’er dampen a brow in the yards or even the cement plant, though the streets are full of motorcars.
Even in a place small as that, no
one knew how he’d lost it—the arm,
don’t you know? He’d a tale or two for us now and again, of where he’d been and what he’d seen, but not even the grannies knew about the arm.
He’d been there,
Been gone. Back with one.
with two arms.
Two years he’d been gone. Two
years back. Much
could happen, even in this
misbegotten crater on the back of
beyond. But with his mother dead and his father away for the drink-driving 78 | SANSKRIT
It never helped to ask
neither. Not right out when he was
hanging meat in his father’s butcher shop or taking his pint. Not
subtle-like either, if any Irish—man or lad—could manage subtle.
Until that Wednesday years
back when—for no reason one could
fathom, other than it being a fine day,
warm for the season and clear—he felt inclined to share the tale
of his arm. The losing of it, don’t you know.
Was Brian started it. A fine lad
to be sure. Ruddy and tall, a true Derry man he was—from his
mother’s side. His father was born,
raised, and buried in County Louth
without so much as a visit to the relatives in America.
Brian had traveled. Off to Dub-
lin first, then to London, though he
didn’t like that much. Once to Manchester. Being as he had
traveled, Brian felt he could expound
