The Butcher’s Arm by D. Ferrara

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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, with two arms. Been gone. Back with one. 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 crash, it wasn’t as if you’d hear it over a pint or the garden wall. 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 Dublin first, then to London, though he didn’t like that much. Once to Manchester. Being as he had traveled, Brian felt he could expound

on the missing arm. One world view to another, as it were. He leans back against the wall. We’re having a bit and a smoke, there behind the old school. I had been in that school when a single master taught every lad, with the girls away down to St. Margaret’s, but now it is a bingo hall three nights a week and nothing the rest. The wall hid us well enough so the old biddies in the houses ’round the square would have nothing to cluck about. If they noticed us at all, gathering one at a time, they’d have a hard time explaining why they’d nothing better to do than watch the wall of the old school and who was lighting up behind it and what he carried in his hand. Jesus. Brian had the story, so he said, as if you could believe the likes of him, with his florid tales and raucous laughter. No, says Brian, the real story. About the arm. And how he came to lose it.

Can’t be, we says. Why would he tell you? Didn’t, says Bri. I found out. On my own. Then Bri tells us a tale, full—as they say—of the sound and fury, oceans and boats, a great grinding machine for the loading of cargo, storming nights and the smashing down of the machine arm on the flesh and tearing through bone and cartilage and no doctor but the rummy signed on with the crew, not that even a great surgeon, not Christian Barnard could have saved it— Was Joe that snorts: Christian Barnard was a feckin’ heart surgeon then, wasn’t he? And famous. Why would he be after signin’ on a boat?

I’m just sayin’, says Bri, the wind was knocked out of him, so as to make the story fall away at an end. Anyway, says Joe, was a car crash. In France, I hear, that took the arm. He was riding—shotgun, like the Americans say—at night, in the Pyrenees— The Pyrenees are in Spain, pipes up Matt. You’re an eejit, says Brian, glad for his chance to muddle Joe’s tale.

The Pyrenees are French. Am I telling the story? says Joe. It was France, not that it is the least bit important, and the mountains were the Pyrenees, just as I said. I’ve the story straight from my cousin, and isn’t he after being friends with the man? Am I telling the story? says Joe. It was France, not that it is the least bit important, and the mountains were the Pyrenees, just as I said. I’ve the story straight from “Shamed, are my cousin, and isn’t you? You he after being friends with the man? should be” I could hold my tongue no longer: ’Twas a knife fight. In a pub, sure, in Africa. Kenya, I think. Brian and Matt turns on me like I was Orange, the one shouting over the other, and me standing my ground. Then we notice the shadow, and the butcher himself stands, arm folded, as if the other would be there if it could. He’s quiet, like he was all the time, silence sunken into his face and chest like flesh itself. He stares at us, then reaches for a fag, plucking it from the pack with his lips, flaring the lighter, easy as if he had two hands for the job, though there was still only the one. Fine thing, he says at last. Great lads like you, standin’ by a wall, making a grand tale of a stranger’s misfortune. That was something of a lie, being as we had known him and his people since we was wee, except for the time he went away. No matter, we scuffed the ground, looking down. Shamed, are you? You should be. Car crashes, boats, knife fights. Brilliant. Brian said later he didn’t know what prompted him, possibly the devil himself. He asks, straight out, What was it then? The butcher drags a bit, flicks an ash, gray into gray dust. I’m not inclined to share

private things. Not at all. Bri mumbles: Sorry. Still and all, it might be good for you to know. A lesson, like. It takes him three more drags to finish his smoke, then he rolls out the tobacco, all careful, crumbling the paper to a tiny ball. A lesson, he says again. You lads know Father Michael, at St. Peter’s? Sure. Fat Father Michael’s been pastor since Cromwell soiled the holy ground—for a long time. Father Michael’s a hard man now, even more than when I was a lad. Always after us to come to Mass during the week, trying to catch us smoking in the church. We’d hide behind the reliquary, behind old Oliver Plunkett’s head. The incense is thick there most days, so you can’t smell the cigarette smoke ten feet away. The butcher glares at Joe, who’s making a bruit trying to hide the bottle under his legs, before he goes on. It’s hollow, don’t you know, the reliquary. A small lad, like myself at the time, can fit in it. Not so! We had all heard such things: the great gold box, hung from the ceiling of the church, topped with the tiny glass case that held the head of the martyr, was half again as tall as a man. Swing like a lantern, it did— the old crows claimed the saint’s heart beat inside, moving the reliquary like a wind. No one knew what was in it, save for the little glass case with the blackened skull. We wondered, of course, poking each other in Mass, giggling, guessing. Joe manages: It’s locked, then, isn’t it? Now, yes. Because… He stops. I shouldn’t be sayin’. ’Tis a terrible tale. I croak: The lesson, right? We’re after needing a lesson. His dark eyes have a bit of a glint. Right. A lesson. There was four of us there, just lads, not big as you lot. I was twelve, the youngest, but bold. I hear from the head altar boy the reliquary had a door, solid gold, as was the whole piece, with a genuine ruby—big as your eye— for a knob.

He also told me that inside, away from the women and the young ones, was the saint’s own pecker. His words suck the air from our lungs. We think: A saint’s pecker? Did saints even have peckers? He nods as if we had actually asked the question. He leans into us and us to him: The pecker was kept in secret, only brought out on the saint’s birthday and then only for the best men of the parish. No need to lock the reliquary, altar boy told me. Angels would knock you senseless for even thinking of touching the Holy Member. That’s what he called it. “The Holy Member.” Us lads nod, like every day we think about the Holy Member. The butcher went on: Being the brazen one, I told the others I would see for myself. Just to be sure, I thought about the pecker for a full hour. When no angels so much as tapped my skull, I stared and squirmed, tryin’ to see into the reliquary, dark as Guinness in an earthen cup. Alas. No joy. Then I come up with a plan. My lads would watch the church as I did the deed, signalin’ if anyone came in. We’d do it on a Wednesday, as the novena was Tuesday and living rosary Monday. Wednesday, there’d be nothing. Wednesday next was a funeral, everyone giving out with bawling and such. Wednesday fortnight was perfect. It was a fine day— no old gentlemen sleeping off the pub and the rain. There were two girls who made a show of stopping every day after school to light a candle apiece. Emily and Charlotte McLoughlin, who work in the bakery now, they bein’ only wee ones then. They’d not be long. I ducked into the corner of the church where the reliquary hung and stuck my nose into the books that talked about the martyr being drawn and quartered by the English. Emily and Charlotte were frightened of the martyr’s head, the hollow eyes filled with pitch: they did their business and left.

I waited for the church’s great inner door to close, then the larger one outside. Counted ten to be sure, came up to the reliquary. I touched the sides, testin’.

No angels. Clear skatin’. I felt around for the door. The reliquary was bigger around than I could reach, with a pointed bottom and the glass box with the saint’s head on top. I couldn’t touch the top if I had a stool. One thing for certain: there was no ruby big as your eye—or a sparrow’s eye. There was a little dab of a red stone set in the gold, and I twisted on that for a minute. The stone wasn’t any kind of knob or latch and it wouldn’t turn. Instead it fell into my hand. I don’t mind sayin’, when I felt it let go, I thought I’d piss my pants. I shoved the stone into my pocket, then thought better and chucked it into the bank of candles. It splashed into one of the big ones; the wax jumped and snuffed two flames. Shite! I thought. Emily and Charlotte had dropped sixpence for those candles, and now they’ve gone to waste. At least no one would find it

on me. The reliquary swung and clanked me, back of the leg. Down I go, a sack of mealy potatoes. It swung back again, smashin’ me in the head as I was trying to rise, drawin’ blood. Argh, I

“I cried, and cried, and kicked it a kicked it in a good good shot. In the glass shot” top Oliver Plunkett’s head rattled around, and for a minute I thought the glass would break and the pitched old thing drop out. I reached to steady the reliquary. As I held it still, I felt the door. It opened with a bit of a pry, fingers only, revealing the black inside. He stops at this point, reaching for a fag. Joe hands him one quick as a shot, and Brian has a match to it in an instant. Well? asks Matt. Well? What? Oh. Yes. The church was dark and the door was on the side

without any candles or windows, so I had to turn the whole thing around on its chain. By the candlelight I could see nothing but a sack, strung up by a golden chain itself, only small. The sack was out of my reach, so I had to step into the reliquary. It swung again and I lost my balance and tumbled into it, the door slamming behind me. I almost panicked then, kicked the door open, but I stopped. I was in. Nothing to be done. The bottom wasn’t flat, like a floor, but pointed down, and I had to balance a foot on either side to stand. Even straight up I could hardly reach the sack. I shimmied up the sides like a crab, see, until I grabbed it and worked it off its hook. By then my eyes were used to the dark, and a bit of light came through the holes pierced through the sides, making a design, like. The cloth on the sack was old and crumbled a bit. For a minute I held it. Then I opened the sack and looked inside.

It was nothing but a wee, hard, black thing, no bigger than a child’s finger. If this was a saint’s pecker, I thought, I’ll take a sinner’s any day. The thought nagged at me, though. I couldn’t help myself, see, wanting to see if… Well, to compare, don’t you know? I reached into my own pants there, just for the size of it. All this time my head was bleeding from where the reliquary hit me. Not gushing floods or nothing, but some now and again. And the blood, you see, was dripping through the holes of the reliquary. So when Mary Tracey came into the altar area, from back where my lads couldn’t see her, what does she see but the reliquary of the head of Oliver Plunkett—dripping blood. She falls to her knees in a faint, sure she’s seen a holy miracle. Father Michael comes upon her in that state, sees the blood. It’s not a miracle he’s thinkin’, though. He pulls open the reliquary door: there I be, one hand in my pants and the pecker of Blessed Oliver Plunkett in the other. He stops again for a long drag.

What happened? Matt asks, only because he was quicker than the rest of us, Mary Tracey of the story being his father’s second cousin, though dead now the five years. The father grabbed me by the neck, says the butcher, and threw me to the floor, roaring that I’d violated the sanctity of the church and shamed myself besides. In a terrible voice he told me that the next time I abused— that’s what he called it, abused— myself, Oliver Plunkett himself would strike off my arm. That put a fear in me such that I resolved then and there never to tempt fate. I didn’t either. Until… He stops. We look, then, one to the other. The butcher sighs. Three years back I was having a scratch, bit of an itch, innocent as a lamb. I went a little too far to the left, and damned if a flash of lightning didn’t take my arm at the shoulder. So quick, I never felt a thing. He finishes his cigarette, stubbing it out on the wall, then takes it apart in his fingers until there was naught but a bit of paper. Nah, he says. It’s all shite. And none of your affair, besides. Which was all that was ever said on the subject, that day to this.

THE END

by D. Ferrara