Days earlier, he’d cleared the oak table of its stacks of old paid bills, dirty rags, various nails, screwdrivers, and light bulbs. He’d also moved the blue gas lantern that had never worked, and more of the forgotten and broken. He’d reluctantly thrown away the unsalvageable and created space for the rest of the miscellaneous on new wooden shelves he’d made and mounted on the wall, about the only carpentry he’d done since school. Then he’d repainted the stained, gouged tabletop in a rich dark green, as though bringing it back to life.
He opened his metal toolbox, revealing his horde of seconds dolls and soldiers, all arranged in neat rows. The damaged toys seemed to stare, as if waiting for his next move. He removed the first five toys and placed them on the workbench—three soldiers, one with an arm missing, one with a gun missing, and one with an inferior eye, and two dolls, one with a half leg and the other with a single cheek painted bright pink, the other cheek an empty, varnished ivory. The toys were tiny versions of him, Tricia, John, Anna, and Ivor. He added the soldier with no chin strap, reuniting tiny Michael with his tiny family.
Billy moved about the garage, searching among the boxes, bags, bric-a-brac, and old furniture for a wooden, stand-alone easel that had belonged to Michael. Back when Michael was ten or eleven, he had loved to paint. Billy seemed to recall an upside-down rainbow, a spotted alligator with black fangs, and a green owl in a white tree. The phase hadn’t lasted long, Michael’s interests turning instead to music, his studies, the football, and the farm. Billy swallowed hard, remembering how his father used to sit Michael on his lap, even before the boy could walk or talk, and drive him around the farmyard in his red tractor, saying, “You’re a right Brennan. You’re going to be a right good farmer.”
Billy at last found Michael’s easel behind the old blue-painted sideboard that had stood in their dining room for years, before Tricia replaced it for something better. He removed the folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and taped it to the easel. After an Internet search for the most beautiful villages in Ireland, he had printed out this color photograph of Inistioge in Kilkenny. Inistioge sat nestled in the Nore Valley and boasted the remains of a Norman castle and monastic priory. Period homes and traditional cottages lined the streets, most whitewashed and several others covered in red and green ivy. More trees than people populated the village and its environs, clusters of firs, poplars, redwoods, chestnuts, and giant weeping beeches. He knew of the weeping willow, but not the weeping beech. As if those melancholy, copper beeches weren’t enough, the River Nore ran alongside the village, right under a majestic eighteenth-century stone bridge with ten arches—magnificent images both, and both representing Michael’s two greatest fears.
Billy placed a length of wood on the table and set about cutting and sanding it. He would first make the base for the miniature village, and then a thatched, whitewashed cottage to house the six tiny Brennans. After, he would build thatched cottages for the rest of his growing seconds community, and then make the ruins of the castle and priory. He would paint the river and create the stone bridge from clay, and also re-create the trees and wooded hills, and the meandering roads and walkways. He would make a wonderful new world, and there, he would teach Michael to not be afraid.
Twelve
The day of Michael’s inquest fell. Billy, Tricia, and John arrived at Moran’s Hotel, dressed in their Sunday best. To everyone’s surprise, John had insisted on attending, and looked about as ill as Billy felt. The three hurried toward the entrance, hoping they wouldn’t meet anyone.
They paused inside the hotel lobby, trying to locate the makeshift courtroom. A receptionist with a tall black beehive sat behind the desk, but they didn’t want to ask directions and dally in plain view. They would get this fiasco over with fast, put it behind them, and never make mention of it again. Even as Billy told himself these things, some force felt as though it were gathering inside him and would erupt through the top of his head.
They charged forward, Billy in the lead, half blindly following the signs. His anger and anxiety climbed. It was beyond wrong for the government to put them, anyone, through this, forcing them to listen to details that would burn inside them for a long time afterward. So help Billy, if anyone in here said “committed” next to “suicide.” He never used the term now. Never wanted to hear anyone else use it, either. Suicide wasn’t a crime. Its victims weren’t criminals.