Raining Up

By Ren Patterson

Leo Levy, thirty-five, advertising drone, aspiring photojournalist, is staring at a downhill slide into middle age. Following the devastating death of his father, he heads to Ireland in search of an adventure... and for his sins, he finds one. While Levy is establishing himself near Ireland's Western shores, Malachy McSwiggin, a feared IRA leader, is escaping from the H-Blocks in Belfast's Long Kesh Prison and heading South with the law and a secret IRA faction chasing him. Soon afterward, Levy meets Tara, a disenfranchised Irish schoolteacher home on holidays - the new love of his life. Together, they are drawn into a terrifying journey through the violent underbelly of Ireland, an odyssey that could well destroy them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ren Patterson
• Release date: Mar 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781937862152

Ren Patterson

Ren Patterson has written, produced and directed numerous documentary, educational and corporate films and has a number of feature screenplays in development. He is also working on two other novels. Ren was born and raised in New York City and lived for nearly five years in the Republic of Ireland. He now lives in Madison Wisconsin.

Book preview

Raining Up

Ren Patterson

Copyright 2012 by the author of this book, Ren Patterson.

Second edition.

All rights reserved.

The book’s author retains sole copyright to his contributions to this book.

Published by BookCrafters.

Joe and Jan McDaniel SAN-859-6352

self-publish-your-book.com

[e-mail]

This is a work of absolute fiction. Names, characters, incidents and many places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, to real names, places or events is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by David Bahm.

Cover photo by Ren Patterson.

Author photo by Jamye Patterson.

Print copies of Raining Up may be ordered from

www.bookcrafters.net and many online bookstores.

www.raininguponline.com

Smashwords Edition

Licensing Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal use and enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please visit Smashwords.com and purchase a copy for yourself. Thank you for respecting this author’s work.

Dedication

For my father, my mother and my daughter.

And for three great women who graced my life:

Barbara, Maria and Jamye.

Table of Contents

1. Leo Levy Early October 1999

2. Dublin

3. Off to the West

4. Ballygantee

5. Sister Mary Joseph and The Nuns of Sacred Heart Convent

6. Tara: The Lost Daughter of Eire

7. Providence

8. Heading North

9. Lough Erne

10. Omagh

11. Derry

12. Hanlon and Campbell

13. Glenabbey

14. Ten Million Miles to Innishowen

15. Coleraine

16. Let the Bastards Try and Catch Us

17. Tread Softly, Soldier, When the Divil’s On Your Trail

18. The Revelation

19. Inishmoor

20. Endings and Beginnings

21. New York

22. Philip Q. Downey, Esquire

23. Friday. September 14, 2001

Acknowledgements

Leo Levy

Early October 1999

Levy was heading to Ireland, trying to outrun his simmering rage. It was a living, breathing, slow-boiling thing, this anger of his, like a fiery cyst, a volcano ready to blow. It had begun after he was downsized, continued following a near-bankruptcy, flourished in the conclusion of an unsuccessful consultancy, and finally exploded into full-blown madness after the wildly premature death of his father.

Deep within, Levy felt, as he passed his thirty-fifth birthday, that his opportunity for an unfettered escape, one spent trying to become a serious photojournalist, was drawing quickly to a close.

Ireland could be my last shot, he’d told those closest to him, once the notion had truly taken hold. Then he sold nearly everything he owned, did as much freelance work as his body and mind would allow, took every dime he had from his personal accounts, his meager mutual funds and 401K’s and headed for Ireland with more than sixty thousand dollars in his pocket.

For the first time in years he had to convince himself that there was no urgency in his life. He wouldn’t have to worry about what time he rose in the morning, about what his bosses or his staff or his clients were thinking or needing or expecting from him. His only concern had been finding the lightest, most powerful laptop he could, a Mac, of course, and the best professional digital camera available. With that accomplished, he would pack his possessions into a utility case and a compact, specially constructed backpack made to hold it all. He also invested in a large Manhattan post office box, paying for two years usage fees in advance, feeling certain he would need a place to send personal mail and sundries for good keeping. He also assumed that upon his return he might have to depend on forwarded mail from various contacts, companies and agencies for work. He left a key with both of his brothers.

Levy packed only one necktie. It bore the branding of his beloved New York Jets in Kelly green embroidery on a dark green background.

Appropriate, no? he’d asked his brother, Bill, all this green? Maybe it’ll help me fit in.

Levy stared through the glass wall at the sprawling airport, past the eastern-most runways, at the drab Queens landscape, the tired fifties architecture, the multitude of jockeying planes waiting to take people to hundreds of distant places. He became aware of a young man drifting over and staring out the window beside him.

It’s a beautiful place, this, said the young man in a thick west of Ireland brogue. He was boyishly handsome, reed-thin and fairly tall, with dark blond hair cut in a pop shag right out of the late seventies. He was wearing a booster jacket for the Ballygantee football club, jeans, a New York Yankees cap, and the map of Ireland, as they say, scrawled across his ruddy face. I’ll miss it, he continued as an aside.

Me too, was all Levy could manage in way of a reply.

Are you going home? the young man asked.

Home? No I’m going to Ireland… to visit.

Arra, going home is what we call going to Ireland… visiting… going home… same thing.

Well, in that case, I suppose I’m going home, Levy said, pleased with the sound of it.

My name is Connor, said the young man. Are we on the same flight, d’ya think?

I don’t know. What flight are you on?

Aer Lingus E. I… wait while I see… Aer Lingus E.I. one three-nine to Dublin.

We are on the same flight, Levy replied. Afterward, he told the young man his name.

Connor held out his hand, a workingman’s hand with strong fingers and plenty of calluses. You’d never mistake this hand for that of an accountant, a lawyer or an executive. Levy took the outstretched hand and shook it warmly. He thought it was good to meet someone from the heart of the place he was heading.

Okay, so! I’ll ask you again. Where are you headed, if you don’t mind?

I don’t mind - Dublin to start off. I think I’ll be comfortable in a big smelly city. Just ‘til I get my feet on the ground.

Dublin’s no New York, Yank. But if it’s big and smelly you’re lookin for, you’ll find plenty of both in that town.

It’s just for a while, he said, until I get settled. Then… who knows?

Wherever the trail leads ‘ya.

Wherever the wind blows.

Go n’eiri an bothar leat.

Sorry?

May the road rise up to meet ‘ya.

Gaelic?

We just call it Irish. Can I see your boarding pass? Maybe we’re near each other. We can talk a bit on the way over.

They compared seat assignments. Levy had purchased a one-way, first class ticket. They were sitting at opposite ends of the plane so they made plans to meet in the rear of the cabin, halfway through the flight.

Levy had requested a window seat even though he usually hated anything but an aisle. He wanted something that would allow him to stretch out the leg loosely connected by a decomposing, arthritic knee. He also wanted to begin his trip with a bit of luxury, something he felt certain he would experience little of once he reached his destination.

On this night it was equally important for him to have a picture of New York, glittering at night, fading beneath the clouds and black sky. He wanted to put that image in the diehard New Yorker part of his memory. It might have to last him a long time.

Levy hadn’t traveled much in his life, and when he had it was nearly always for business or some other purpose that took all the joy out of it. Now, when there was nothing but the joy, he had the kind of heavy heart and aggravated stomach that creeps up and pounces when you are leaving something or someone you love dearly.

Once he had a chance to relax, when the plane had risen above the clouds, he closed his eyes and tried to put his impulsive actions into some kind of perspective. He reminisced about St. Patrick’s Day, when his father was still alive, only six months earlier. The two of them sat in the living room of his parents’ Manhattan apartment, watching The Quiet Man, while his mother cooked corned beef and cabbage and boiled red potatoes to honor the day. Neither of his brothers was there. Both had business and family considerations and neither thought much of St. Paddy’s Day anyway. But Leo and his father did. And while John Wayne was stealing Maureen O’Hara’s heart, Ireland was quietly stealing Leo’s.

His father, the estimable Randall Levy, was a man well-loved by anyone who’d ever met him. A one-time cartoonist, he was, at that time, the creative director for a boutique marketing and PR agency.

Leo, it seemed, had been following directly in his father’s doomed footsteps. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes, Leo considered himself an artist in every sense. This had little to do with talent or ability. Rather, it was a passion that permeated every fiber of his being, a compulsive need to create, a feeling he often wished he could avoid, especially when he considered, often enviously, the comfortable lifestyles of his brothers, friends and much of his family.

Both Leo and his father had an irrational love for Ireland, a country they had never visited and one on whose heritage and culture they had no claim. It was something private they shared, a little game they played, pretending they might one day take it to the next level and plan an actual trip together. They watched films made in or about Ireland and the Irish, and often discussed them into the night. They read the greats: Shaw, Wilde, Joyce, Beckett, Swift, and Yeats among others. They attended the shows of Irish playwrights, the concerts of visiting Irish musicians, the traveling exhibits of Irish painters and sculptors. Leo’s mother usually joined them but didn’t really share their passion. She simply enjoyed watching the two of them.

Oddly, though, it was The Quiet Man that triggered this love affair with all things Irish. It had become a tradition for them, replete with the dinner that always followed on St. Paddy’s Day. This, of course, always seemed ironic to the Levys because of how Americanized that film is. But they were a family of self-made traditions. On Christmas Eve, this family of twentieth century Jews could be found watching A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, or Miracle on 34th Street while sipping eggnog and eating Santa-shaped sugar cookies beside their glittering Christmas tree.

Then, one heartbreaking Tuesday morning, Leo got a call from his brother, Bill, who told him that his father, only fifty-seven years old, had collapsed on the platform of the Metro North Railroad at Grand Central Station, on his way to work. He dropped to his knees in the crush of a rush hour crowd, falling onto his face, that handsome face. He died in that friendless place, right there in the filth and human crush of strangers. Ironically, it was a nurse, one with a thick Irish brogue, who’d witnessed the event and tried to revive the fallen Randall Levy.

The suddenness, the shock was indescribable. Hundreds showed up for the service two days later, despite the fact that they’d had little time to make a formal announcement, so quickly had word spread of Randall Levy’s death.

Alberta, the well loved Mrs. Levy, was devastated beyond words and the consequence was immediate. Everyone cared for her and gathered around her to offer their consolation. With Leo, on the other hand, the damage, the reality was longer in taking hold. His was the quintessential delayed reaction, a cataclysmic delayed reaction. Suddenly one morning he found he could not get up out of bed. He could not face work. Could not cook or clean. He could no longer communicate with his friends or his family. His girlfriend of two years became an afterthought a month after she stopped calling him. All his plants died. His parrot keeled over, much, he imagined, as his father had done, and lay rotting among the detritus of its cage bottom for weeks. His fish died and floated to the surface like some strange new life forms in the steadily blackening aquarium. At one point Levy hadn’t bathed for nearly three weeks. He half-jokingly attributed the death of the flora and fauna around him to his own grotesque smell.

But the malaise passed with time and the great winged thing that was his passion returned slowly from the ashes. This stagnation, which had become his existence for nearly three months, propelled him toward his new magnetic north, toward Ireland. It was that simple. One warm, rainy Wednesday in June, after months of inertia, he had no idea if he’d ever be human again. Then he threw The Quiet Man into his LaserDisk player and by Thursday he’d ordered his ticket to Dublin for an October departure.

In a sports bar, on a steamy summer day, Levy paid a moment’s notice to a feature article on the TV magazine, Ireland’s Eye, an import for the displaced Irish living in America. It was a story about the escape of a prisoner from Long Kesh (the infamous H-Blocks) in Northern Ireland. He was as interested in the escapee’s name, Malachy McSwiggin, as he was the story itself. There was something unusual about the sound of it, something melodious: Malachy McSwiggin.

The reporter stressed that this was only the second successful escape from The Maze, as they called it, since the prison meals lorry breakout nearly sixteen years earlier. McSwiggin, according to the piece, was a terrorist and vicious murderer, responsible for more than fifty deaths. He was being hunted by a combined task force of Gardai, UDR, Irish and British intelligence and the military in both the Republic and the north. Some believed that McSwiggin might already have escaped the country, the reporter said.

When he opened his eyes, after sleeping for what seemed like only a minute or two, Leo noticed Randall Levy, his recently deceased father, in the seat beside him. The elder Levy looked over and smiled that assured, guileless smile everyone loved, and placed his hand on Leo’s knee.

Well, Son, he whispered, we’re off to the auld sod and no one can stop us.

Dad?

I know, Leo. I know. Timing was never my strong suit.

Right, Levy the younger responded in his state of confusion.

This was not the first time he had seen his father since the funeral. Momentary sightings at the edges of mirrors, reflections in car windows, blurred images behind closing elevator doors had recently become quite familiar. This was, however, the first time they had communicated. Levy closed his eyes and cried for the first time since his father had left them.

Cheers, Yank. Were ‘ya dreamin’?

I guess I was.

C’mon and we’ll talk in back of the plane. Sure your seatmate’ll be back from the loo any minute.

Maybe we should ask for a couple of beers and bring them back with us?

Now you’re talkin’ like a right Irishman.

A flight attendant gave them two bottles of Guinness, which they carried to the back of the coach section, into a little alcove between the rearmost seats and the lavatories. Connor stood close, literally leaning up against Levy’s side, so close it seemed almost conspiratorial to the American. He wondered if Connor planned to reveal some special secret or bit of urgent news. Later, he would discover that this kind of closeness in conversation was common among Irishmen, something learned in pubs and at sporting events, cattle auctions and Friday night ceilies, the kind of unspoken intimacy that would never take place between straight men in New York.

You should come to the house some time, Connor said. It’s in the west. God’s country, my Uncle Jack calls it. I think you’d like it.

Seriously? I mean I would love to.

I’ll give you the family’s phone number before we leave. You come out anytime you like.

Can I ask how come you’re going to Dublin instead of Shannon if you’re from the west?

I’m visiting Nuala, my girlfriend. She’s up at UCD, studying to be a solicitor.

Maybe we can have a drink together, the three of us, or some dinner before you go back home.

I’ll only be there for the day, but I’d love ‘ya to meet Nuala. She’s crazy about Yanks.

They talked and drank a couple of beers and Leo’s imagination went wild. They’d chatted for nearly an hour, standing as they had begun, pressed side-by-side, real Irish-like, trading stories and secrets, quickly forging a friendship that would grow and be nurtured in the coming months. Leo told Connor of his troubles following the death of his father.

Me Da has never heard of cholesterol, Connor said later, after he learned how Randall had died. He’s a farmer. Real old-world-like. He gets up with the rooster and Mum cooks him a breakfast of rashers, pudding, sausages and eggs. For his tea he has a more sensible meal, boiled eggs, shoulder of bacon, bread with big lumps of that good Irish butter. He even uses milk straight from the cow in his cocoa. I tell him he should inject the stuff straight into his heart and save the wear and tear on his teeth. He just ignores me - stubborn auld bastard - tells me he hasn’t had his own teeth in years.

Try harder, my man, if you really love him, or one morning you’ll wake up and find him dead.

There’s no trying harder, Leo. You’ll meet him and you’ll see. ‘Course, you’ll love’m. Everyone does. A great man for the boys - as they say in Ireland. I’m sure it means something else in the New York. But you’ll never see anyone so comical about it for the rest of your life. And you’ll forgive him for anything he says or does.

I’m looking forward to meeting him and the rest of your family.

So you’ll come?

Of course, if you don’t think the family’ll mind. I can’t tell you how happy I am I met you. I have no one in Ireland.

You do now.

Yeah. I suppose I do. Hey, what made you come over to talk to me? Are you just friendly?

Nah. I’m gay. Can’t you tell…? Actually, I thought you might need a friend. Ireland’s a great country for all you Yanks goin’ home. But you shouldn’t look so miserable about it.

I’m not miserable.

Sure you are.

All right, maybe a little miserable, but not about going home. I was miserable about -

About leaving New York. I know. So was I.

Dublin

Well the years have made me bitter; sure the gargle dimmed my brain,

‘Cause Dublin keeps on changing and nothing seems the same.

The Pillar and the Met have gone, the Royal long since pulled down,

As the grey unyielding concrete makes a city of my town.

Dublin in the Rare Ould Times

Pete St. John, 1977

Levy dropped off his things with the Treadway’s concierge. His room was still hours from being ready. Then he stepped out into Ireland for the first time. He bought a local street map and decided to walk. Just walk. Anywhere. He wanted to follow his instincts, begin his discoveries. This was Dublin. He was here.

As he walked eastward, toward the Liffey, a direction he would always ponder after this strange night had ended, he realized someone was walking beside him, and he knew, even before he looked over, that it was his father, looking every bit as corporeal as those walking in front and back of him.

Hello, Son, said Randall, smiling broadly.

Hi, Dad, he thought to himself, trying consciously to transmit these thoughts to the vision walking in step with him. I won’t talk out loud, Dad. I’m new here. People might not understand.

I can hear you just fine, Son.

So how do you like Ireland so far?

I was going to ask you the same question.

I’m on my way to find out - but I think I’m really gonna’ like it.

Soon Randall was gone. There was no slow-dissolve like in the movies, just here one second and gone the next. Levy hoped he might eventually gain control over these little visits. It was exciting, though, to see his father again even if these were always going to be surprise appearances. They reminded him of just how much he had lost and how lucky he was to have had those last couple of years with Randall. He looked up at the night sky, drew in a great draft of the damp autumn air and watched breath plume against the yellow light of the street lamps.

The map showed him he was heading toward the Ha’Penny Bridge, which crossed the Liffey where Bachelor’s Walk met Aston Quay. These names, he thought, seemed more appropriate for a storybook than a city map. He continued moving northward toward the river and he sensed that he was walking toward his destiny.

The Gallery of Irish Photographers, a place he stumbled upon by pure chance, was nestled between two shops, a turf accountant and an antiques consignment shop. It had a narrow façade but was roomy and comfortable inside. He bought a hot tea from a barista who’d set up in the rear and began to tour the exhibit.

Levy had been drawn to a collection of photographs displayed in the window, a series of color and monochrome images of Ireland’s round towers. The subject seemed pedestrian but many of the prints were artistic and compelling. Once inside, he studied the black & whites on one wall. They were rich in tone, like old silver plates. He hoped to go and see the real towers when he could and take his own photographs.

Sometime later he noticed flashing colored lights reflecting off the gallery’s front windows and walked over to investigate. The rotating blue, red and white lights were actually spinning on top of a truck of some kind three blocks away. It was too far to make out the details from his vantage point. Levy assumed it was a police car or an ambulance. Some unnamable force he would later question drew him outside into the night. He began to move in the direction of this beacon. In the same unconscious way he’d exited the gallery, he found himself fumbling blindly for his camera. His heart was thudding against his chest. Is this what it feels like to be a photojournalist? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t photographed anything worthwhile in fifteen years.

His journalistic period, such as it was, had lasted less than a year. Soon after it began he would discover advertising. That was, effectively, the end of his compassionate period. It was also the beginning of compromise, and possibly of his unique form of cowardice, something he would often brood about and regret, a character flaw he could never tolerate in himself.

People had gathered around a spot on the northern embankment of the River Liffey just past Capel Street. A second car with sirens screaming and blue lights spinning, pulled up behind the first one. Since the larger crowd was gathered on one side of the narrow channel, Levy stood on the less populated side opposite them. His powerful zoom lens brought the scene closer.

Beneath him, in the channel, a woman in a heavy coat and headscarf was being sucked down into the swirling black water. The high tide and swift currents were twisting her around, first one way then the other. Levy snapped on his strobe and began shooting without thinking. An anonymous voice in the crowd said, she just jumped in, man, like she was taking a dip in the Aegean. Kilt herself so.

Levy was certain the ambient light, even amplified by his strobe, would not be enough to get a clear shot. What he saw, however, made him hope, inwardly, that no image would appear. The woman was still alive. Her desperate, blinking eyes stared upward, taking in the night sky above, the crowd, the rushing water and flashing lights. Every time she opened her mouth, possibly to shout or simply to breathe, it filled immediately with the filthy water. Apparently resolved to her tortuous fate, the woman’s face, her dark eyes seemed to say please, just let it be over. She made no real attempt to struggle, just looked up in one very specific direction and smiled. She might even have waved. Levy could not be certain.

And then it was over. Something caught hold of her beneath the surface, the current perhaps, or some rushing piece of detritus, and dragged her under. The police and the emergency services people were dropping stainless steel ladders, ropes and long gaffs into the water along the embankment walls, in the hopes of catching the woman before she drowned. It was obvious to anybody watching, however, that they would fail.

Levy found himself peering through his large zoom lens, moving from the tragedy in the channel to the action along the opposite wall. Faces, in close-up, faces that were blurs of action and wonder, anger and shock, moments of a shared horror, were captured in the memory card that was destined to become the new medium of still photography.

For a fraction of a second, he caught a glimpse of a beautiful Irish face surrounded by a nimbus of thick black hair. She seemed to be staring directly back at him. He took his eye from the ocular for a brief moment but could no longer find that face on the other side. Looking back in the camera didn’t help. She was gone, as if she were a ghost, as if she had never existed.

A moment later he found himself focusing in on another face, one that was in the same area where the drowning woman had been staring, possibly even gesturing. He was a handsome young boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, and was watching helplessly, pushing himself up on the river wall for a better view. His cheeks were wet with tears. Unfathomable sadness and confusion filled his eyes. It was visible even from across the river. Levy zoomed-in as close as possible and opened his lens wide. He powered up his strobe to the largest available burst. Still there wouldn’t be half enough light. So instead he decided to cross the bridge for a closer shot, for what might well be an important part of the story. The boy didn’t move at first. He didn’t seem to notice Levy.

A collective gasp from the crowd drew Levy’s zoom-enhanced observations back to the river, between the struts of the bridge. What he saw both horrified and somehow, pitifully amused him. He fired off three more flash-enhanced shots. The emergency services crew had managed to get a steel cable lasso which was attached to the end of a steel gaff, wrapped around the neck of the drowned woman. No matter how they tried they could not get a good grasp any other way. So they pulled her out of the river

Reviews for Raining Up

[Theresa Ruth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent from its beginning which seemed to be an exploration of self-pity destined to turn into an unprecedented tale of woe overcome. A surprising turn into a fast paced adventure filled with fright and experiences that explore an amalgam of human emotions of characters brought together by coincidence; or a serendipitous plan by fate to allow a grieving man and a young man to come together to begin what leads the reader to a belief and hope for a happily ever after ending.

A book worth reading again and again