Of Whom I Am Chief

By Jim Bridges

It had never started out as a con, but it sure was now. A big one. And there was no easy way for James to end it. In fact, he had long ago had lost interest in trying to do so. He had moved from worrying about his crime to planning his escape. All of the pieces were in place and it was time to run. But was it really going to be that easy? Is anything ever that easy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483591490

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DERRANE, Mary (Kilronan), Aged 3, August 30, 1960 - Passed away after a courageous battle in the wonderful care of the staff in Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe. Deeply loved and sadly missed by her loving parents John and Catherine, brother Martin, sister Anne, grandparents Donough and Katrina, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends. Rest in Peace. House private today (Saturday) and Monday morning. Reposing at her home tomorrow (Sunday) from 3pm to 7pm. Removal on Monday morning to Church of Saint Brigid, Kilronan, Inishmore, arriving for 11am Mass, followed immediately thereafter by burial in Church of Saint Brigid cemetery.

God, I love this woman. Love hardly seems the proper word for it. She consumes me. Has since the very first day I laid eyes upon her in Cork City. There are other loves in my life—a good pint, hurling, my green homeland, and dead Brits. None of these compare to the passion this crazy, strong-headed woman stirs within me.

I have never seen her worked up like she was tonight. I come stumbling into the house in the wee hours fresh after that mad attack at Crossbarry. Somehow Tom Barry can always work us up into a frenzy and somehow we all count us ourselves lucky at the end of the day if we have escaped with our arses and are able to sleep in our own beds with all of our bits intact. As I was scrambling back into the safety of the darkness, I saw two of the lads who will not enjoy that pleasure tonight. Or any other night for that matter. Our attack had not gone well.

Patricia was awake, of course. She was sitting there in her rocker next to Seamus’ crib with all of the lamps extinguished and the dying fire just a few glowing bits of peat. Like some sort of ghost, though, I swear I could see her eyes. They were like embers themselves, burning more brightly than the fire. I quickly shut the door behind me and stood there ready to take my punishment. This was not the first time that I had loudly expressed my displeasure to our friends from across the Irish Sea. This was not the first time that I had escaped yet so as by fire. It was not the first time that I had left mates lying dead in the street. And this was not the first time that some of Patricia’s friends would wake the next morning as widows. Each of these times, the row on my return was brutal. She screamed, she cried, she yelled, and she used words that I would have sworn my sweet wife would not have known. As for me, I usually wrapped myself in the flag and nobly spoke of my duty and my country and my honor.

Standing there in the dark, I braced myself for the onslaught. I was in bits. My heart was pounding, I could not catch my breath, my legs were shaking uncontrollably, and I was pretty sure that I had broken my hand tumbling over the wall behind Slattery’s. I was desperately trying to prepare for the outburst to come, but my mind could not seem to focus. My ears were working well enough though, it must be said.

Seamus and I are leaving here tomorrow, she said softly. We are booked on the Adriatic and sailing to a new life in America. Ye can come with us if you like. I booked passage for three. Or ye can stay here and die. I am not sure that I care anymore, Cormac. Let me know what ye decide in the morning. Seamus and I are already packed and I am going to bed. Good night. Patricia’s voice never rose above a whisper as she spoke. It felt to me, though, as if she had driven the words into my skull with a sledge. I stood there in the dark, not moving, just thinking, for an eternity. I slowly stripped off my clothes, crawled into bed next to her, and pulled her close to me. God, I love this woman. I hope there are no Brits in New York.

When you dine alone, there is no one with whom to share a toast. As far as I could tell, this was the only drawback.

It had been a day worthy of a toast.

Anxious to catch my first glimpse of Dominica, I had risen before the sun. I pulled back the curtain of my stateroom and there she was—a dark mass rising from even darker waters. Off to my right was a sleeping town of twinkling lights. Roseau. Even in the darkness, it looked beautiful.

I was not sure how long we had been here, but I felt pretty certain that we had stopped moving quite a while ago. One grows so used to the vibration of the engines and the gentle movement of the ship that it is noticeable when both cease. Actually though, at times last evening, the movement of the ship was anything but gentle. This had been one of the longer legs on this cruise and the captain had pushed the ship hard out of St. Kitts. Let no one tell you that a cruise ship is too big to feel the waves. They would be lying.

The rising sun slowly illuminated an island that was prettier than any of the photos I had seen. The buildings in Roseau were spread out before me, painted in the vibrant colors of the Caribbean. But it was the rest of the landscape that captured my attention. It was as if the greens of the mountains were competing with the blues of the ocean to see which could produce the most varied hues. It was absolutely stunning. I was the first one off of the ship.

Before leaving the US, I had arranged to hire a driver for my day on the island. While I had done my homework, there is only so much that you can learn from the internet and travel guide books. I wanted to see Dominica with my own two eyes. It was on the top of my list as a potential new home for a number of good reasons, but there were still so many questions to answer. The first of these, of course, would be if I could find my driver. Even before I stepped off the bottom of the gangway, I could see a handsome, young, black man holding up a handwritten sign with my name on it. Well, it was the name that I had given him anyway. So far, so good.

Poor Patrick had earned his fare today. I bet that he did not have many cruise ship tourists push him as hard or extract as much from him as I had. It had been a long day and we put a lot of miles on his old car. On the other hand, I bet that he did not have many cruise ship tourists tip him as much as I had either.

Yes, it had been a good day. With a quick glance around the dining room to make sure that no one was watching, I lifted my champagne flute and whispered softly, To my new home.

From as early as I can recall, I have given great thought to right and wrong. I don’t think that this was a normal thing for a seven-year-old child to think about as they lie in bed, but I can remember turning the concept around in my little head even back in our old house in Houston. We pulled up stakes and moved to Richardson right in the middle of my second grade year, so I can place the timing of those early thoughts with a high degree of confidence.

That is one odd thing about me, I guess. I have vivid, specific memories of the act of thinking. As best I can tell, most other people are not like this. Most everyone else just seems to remember big events. Where were you when Neil Armstrong’s left boot first stepped onto the surface of the moon? What were you doing when you heard that President Reagan had been shot? Yes, I can place myself right back into those monumental moments like everyone else (our next door neighbor’s living room and walking into Chemistry lab at A&M). But who knows where they were when they first realized that their parents really did not know everything? What mindless movie they were watching when they became convinced that most anger was actually a symptom of fear? What they were eating when they decided that man was not inherently good but evil. I can remember the situation around each of these mental milestones like you can remember where you were when the Challenger exploded.

So, I can clearly recall thinking about right and wrong as I lay in my little bed in Houston in the spring of 1966. More specifically, I was wondering about what makes something right? Who gets to decide that? Where is it written down and does everyone, everywhere, play by those same rules? On that particular evening, I was in bed early and I was hungry. As had happened before, peas were the source of my troubles and the genesis of these ponderings. My dad wanted me to eat them, I did not want to. I took a strong moral position, and he took a stronger swat to my backside with his belt. I was sent off to bed early and not allowed to finish my dinner. Just as well, I hated stuffed bell peppers too.

I can remember deciding two things as I lay there that evening. First, the strong make the rules for the weak. This explained both the hunger in my stomach and my sore rear-end. It also explained why my dad (a tall, strong, former high school quarterback) acted so timid around his boss—that scrawny, pencil-necked Mr. Lee. My dad despised him. I could overhear him complaining to Mom about him all the time. Dad could easily snap Mr. Lee like a twig, but he never did. Because Mr. Lee had the real strength. So, instead, Dad would hang up the phone, curse, go put on his suit, and drive downtown to work on a Saturday. Again. The second thing I learned? If the pain of disobedience exceeds the gain, eat the peas.

There is peace in order. Even as a small child, clutter and chaos drove me crazy. Every toy in my room had a place and, after playing with something, I can clearly remember the good feeling of seeing that toy returned safely to its home. My parents used to bring their friends up to my room to show them. I could never figure out why this was so interesting to people. Who wants to live in a world where toys and clothes and books are strewn all over the place? What kind of person can live with that kind of chaos? I had great friends growing up, but I would always try to play outside with them when they came over. It used to drive me mad to see the damage that the Henley brothers could do to my room. As for going over to their house to play, there was no way. They would run around strewing their things around the upstairs like skinny, redheaded tornados while I would try to pick up and organize. Hardly fun for any of us. No order, no peace.

It was not something that I was to grow out of. Starting in junior high, I could not leave my room without making my bed. In high school, my shirts were properly grouped and sorted in the closet (can you imagine hanging a yellow golf shirt next to a Houston Oilers jersey?) and the interior of my truck was always immaculate. As an aside, the exterior of my truck was perhaps the one area where my sense of order and cleanliness did not reign. My father taught me that a four-wheel drive truck is designed for hard work and mud. When you put that truck to its rightful purpose, my dad would say, you need to let the world know. Mud all over the exterior? Very nice. Giant clumps of mud flying off your tires as you get back on the road? Excellent. Grass and weeds hanging from the underside? Perfection. I have never understood the phrase this is the exception that proves the rule, but perhaps it fits here.

If there is peace in order, there is chaos with James Wynn. I first met my college roommate on Sunday, the day before classes were to start in our freshman year. I had been in College Station for almost a week—registering for classes, buying books, organizing my room, and using the map to locate my classrooms. By Wednesday, it seemed as if everyone on our floor had arrived and settled in. Everyone but my roommate. I had checked with my Resident Advisor several times about my absentee roommate, but he had no idea when or if the guy would appear. Apparently, some number of guys just never show up. All he could tell me was that the guy was from Richardson and that his name was James Wynn.

I was sitting at my desk on Sunday evening trying to get a jump ahead by reading the first chapter of my Political Science textbook when I heard a key working the lock on our door. I stood up to see what was happening when the door burst open and James appeared.

Hey there roomie! You must be Charles. I’m James Wynn. Nice to meet you.

Hello. You can call me Charlie, I said. No one except my mom and my third grade teacher calls me Charles.

Ok, Charlie. Good, I like that better. I was a bit worried about rooming with a ‘Charles’. Looks like the luck of the draw has put the two of us together. I hope you like AC/DC. I look forward to catching up with you, but I have got to run. I am supposed to meet this girl from Fish Camp and I am already late. Did you go to Fish Camp? No, well, it was awesome. I guess this bed is mine. I will catch up with you later Charlie. See ya.

I am not sure that James took a breath during that entire staccato outburst. He threw his bag on the upper bunk (was that all he was bringing to college?), turned, and waved as he left the room. I just stood there with my mouth open thinking, Well, I am not sure that I like the name ‘James’ either.

Physically, James and I could hardly be any more different. I was short and stocky, he was tall and thin as a reed. My hair was blond and closely cropped. James looked like someone had tossed a shaggy, black mop onto his head and had not quite hit the target. James had a real hair problem. One of the benefits of my short hair was that I never had to use a blow dryer. In the four years that we were to live together, I never saw James use one either. My complexion was pale and under constant attack from the Texas sun. Even in the depths of winter, James never lost his dark complexion. In the spring semesters, when the sun would return from its time down south of the equator, James would turn dark as a nut. I would just simply turn slightly less pale.

But, it was the differences in our sense of order and cleanliness that almost ended our relationship before it began. I was prepared for a roommate not quite as orderly as I was, but I was definitely not expecting to live with the Henley brothers. James was an absolute disaster. I never once saw him make his bed. Even worse, he once went an entire semester without even washing his sheets, claiming he did not want to do so because, They smelled like sleep. His desk was as you would expect—piled high with books, papers, candy wrappers and empty cans of beer and Dr. Pepper. Once, when my parents were coming up to visit for the SMU game, I tossed an impressive pyramid of fifteen Lone Star beer cans off of his desk and into the trash. I will say that the beer cans were neatly stacked, the only semblance of order that I could ever remember seeing on that desk.

James seemed oblivious to my frustration and I lacked the courage to complain aloud. I later learned in a junior psychology class that I was behaving in a passive aggressive manner—never confronting the problem head-on but seething on the inside at the insensitivity of my roommate. From time to time, I would try to hint at my frustration. Once, in something less than a hint, I picked up all of his dirty clothes off of the floor and threw them onto his bed. Even a couple of pairs of tennis shoes and a pair of cowboy boots. If he noticed at all, he never said. The pile was just pushed to the end of the bed and remained there until it was time to do wash. In the same way, I also once picked up three empty pizza boxes from under his desk and put them on his bed. This he did notice, but to no real effect.

Hey Charlie. Did you put these pizza boxes on my bed? he asked.

Yes, I replied, trying not to look like I was paying attention to the conversation.

Well, they are stinking up my sheets. I am going to throw them outside in the dumpster.

I actually laughed out loud after he left the room on his way to the dumpster. James Wynn was truly oblivious to my feelings about his messiness. Whatever seeds of empathy God plants in our young souls and minds, they had absolutely failed to yet take root in James. He was not mean-spirited. He was not callous. He was not trying to make me angry. James Wynn was simply so self-absorbed that he never even sensed my frustration or unhappiness. To him, I was just a fixture in the room, like our bunk bed or the dresser.

I am surprised that I survived that freshman year. Not that I didn’t try to move out. At least three separate times, I went to my Resident Advisor to initiate the paperwork. And that was just in the first semester! Each time, however, I stopped the process when I realized that I did not have the courage to tell James that I was moving. As I said earlier, I don’t think he would have cared. I am not even sure that he would have noticed. But what if he did? What if my moving hurt his feelings? He was not a mean guy, just a world-class slob. Maybe I was too concerned about his reaction. Maybe I was just too scared of the potential confrontation. Whatever the reason, each time, I tore up the transfer papers (into perfectly equal little squares) and threw them in the trash. Boy, am I glad that I did.

I first felt the power of envy in Paris. The day of my last ever college final, I bolted out of College Station, headed straight to the Houston airport and climbed on a Continental Airlines flight to Rome. Who wants to walk the stage in that decrepit G. Rollie White Coliseum when you could be walking on the floor of a truly decrepit Coliseum in Rome? I had been planning the trip for four years—almost immediately after I graduated from dear old Richardson High School. Around that time, to my utter shock, I received a congratulatory card from my nutty Uncle Robert containing a check for $2,000. I was stunned. Who knew Uncle Robert had that kind of money? I was so uncertain of it myself, that I practically sprinted to my bank to deposit the check before it could bounce. Apparently, Uncle Robert had socked away several thousand dollars years ago in the futile hope that his worthless son, Max, might go to college. With Max recently celebrating his twenty-eighth birthday in the Beto Unit over in Anderson County, I guess Uncle Robert had finally decided to place his money on a different horse. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Two entire months in Europe! A sweet reward for slogging through a Finance degree in three and a half years.

I saved Paris for last. It was the final leg of my trip. It did not disappoint.

For a kid whose travel funds were almost depleted, Luxembourg Gardens was not a bad place to spend the day. You truly felt you were in Paris—the beauty of the palace, the manicured gardens, the expanses of green grass, and the top of the Eiffel Tower just peeking over the trees in the distance. I spent most of my time sitting in one of the thousands of green metal chairs scattered around the pond just outside the palace. I could sit there for hours.

The palace in Luxembourg Gardens is a massive three story building made of some kind of tan stone topped with a steep gray slate roof. In the middle section of the front facade, where I suppose some prince or princess would exit for their morning stroll around the gardens, stood a smaller gray slate dome topped with the French tricolor. The walkways and paths throughout the gardens were made of a loose, crushed stone that reminded me of the pea gravel in my neighbor’s driveway. It made a pleasing crunch under foot. And there were flowers everywhere. Flowers in beds along the pathways, flowers in massive pots set at intervals along the paths, and flowers hanging from beautiful pots near the restaurants and coffee shops. I am hardly one to normally appreciate the beauty of a garden, but this place caught even my dull eye.

People in the gardens seemed to fall into a number of different activities by age. The oldest ones just quietly sat in their green metal chairs and watched the buzz of activity around them. Some read a paper but most simply watched and most did so by themselves. On the other hand, the young were always in packs, as if fearful of being picked off as weakened prey if alone. They would pull their chairs close together and talk and laugh and talk and laugh for hours. Many of these kids seemed to be about my age and almost all of them seemed to be smoking. Perhaps the French do not have a Surgeon General warning them about lung cancer.

The gardens were massive. I am not sure how many acres. But in addition to large swaths of green grass, there were tennis courts and basketball courts and playgrounds and restaurants. I never had the courage to try and join a basketball game, but each day that I was there, I secretly hoped for an invitation. My basketball career had ended in the eighth grade and, although I did not need anyone to tell me that my game was not strong enough for high school, it would have been plenty strong for these courts. These guys were simply not very good. But they sure seemed to enjoy themselves. It was nothing like the serious pickup games from back home. Just a ton of bad dribbling, amazingly poor shooting, and lots of laughing and chasing the ball.

Once I had discovered them, I tried to spend each of my late afternoons in Paris here in the gardens. I had been able to knock out most of the major tourist sites in the first few days of my visit. The Louvre had been my first stop, and I had spent the entire day there. One could easily spend many more days in that massive place, but one would have to love art a lot more than me. One day was enough for me. Besides, I felt like I spent most of that day patiently working my way to the front of the crowd just to see the Mona Lisa. I was unimpressed. If we read to say we’ve read, perhaps too, we see to say we saw. I got not much more from that investment of time than to simply check it off the list.

Versailles, on the other hand, is a place where one day hardly felt like enough. It was a highlight of my time in France. The palace was impressive, of course, but I much more enjoyed my time on the grounds, exploring the gardens and wondering at the fountains. It was just too fantastic and too vast to see in the one day that I allowed for it.

So, with my time in Europe drawing to an end, having seen the sights of Paris that a tourist is obligated to see, I just began to wander the city. I loved those last few days—lingering over a morning coffee for hours, exploring hidden streets, enjoying a glass of wine in the early afternoon. And then off to the gardens.

I was never in much of a hurry to get back to my youth hostel at the end of the day. When I had planned the Paris segment of my trip, I had decided to save a few francs and skip a nicer hotel. Besides, I thought, how much time will I be spending in my room? Well, it turns out that I had spent enough time in there to know that I had made a mistake. The Bastille Youth Hostel was a complete dump. The bed was little more than a cot with sheets so thin and threadbare that you could read through them. I was fairly sure that they had been washed before I arrived—they smelled clean—but there were stains there that I did not want to spend too much time thinking about. The room was small with little room for anything other than the bed. A small table with a single wooden chair were the only other furnishings. The youth hostel in Rome had been so much nicer and roomier. My only complaint about the Allesandro Downtown Hostel had been the shared bathroom. It was one thing to share a toilet and shower with the guys in your dorm. Quite a different thing to walk in on German woman sitting on the toilet reading Der Speigel. My hostel in Paris was horrible, but at least I had paid for the privacy of an en suite room. That being said, perhaps if I had paid a bit more, my private toilet would have had a seat. Have you ever tried to position yourself directly on the porcelain rim of the toilet? I suppose you get what you pay for in life, but I felt more than a little cheated at the Bastille Youth Hostel.

At the other end of the lodging spectrum was the Hotel George V. I passed by this palatial building one day on my way to the Arc de Triomphe. It had been a particularly rough night in the Bastille Youth Hostel and I sat in a bench across the street from the lobby entrance of the George V and just watched the comings and goings of travelers not constrained by a lodging budget of five francs per day. For the most part, the people that came and went fit my mental stereotype—businessmen in their suits returning from negotiating a big deal and older couples making their way out for an early evening meal. What surprised me, though, was the number of people my age that were staying at this hotel. If it was not the most expensive hotel in Paris, the George V had to be in the top three. Like me, these young people were wearing the outfit of the young, American tourist—t-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes. I even saw two guys wearing Aggie t-shirts. They looked like any of the other dozens of guests at my Bastille Youth Hostel. But, clearly they were different. They existed in an entirely different financial universe than those of us in the Bastille Youth Hostel. It was no splurge for them to pay for a comfortable bed and crisp, clean sheets. I would even bet that they were not required to pay more for a toilet seat.

Physically, I could see no difference. They looked and dressed just like me. And, like me, I know that they were just too young to have accumulated this kind of wealth on their own. These kids had to have been born into this lifestyle, this wealth. They wore it too easily and too naturally. Walking in and out of one of the most expensive hotels in the world without a care in the world. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. What had they done to earn this lifestyle? What struggles had they