Father Feeney's March of the Blessed

by Richard Gibney

On his first day, Father Feeney came into the classroom in his battered slip-ons, removing his hat to reveal his greasy pate. He glared at us through red-rimmed eyes, gripping his cane in his left hand like a scythe. He turned his back on us, grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a large cross on the blackboard. He looked directly at Derek O’Callaghan, sitting beside me.

            “What is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet?” Feeney asked.

            Derek shrugged indifferently. The priest leaned over and slapped the back of his hand across Derek’s face.

            “Answer me, boy!” Feeney roared.

            “I don’t know, sir!” Derek replied.

            The cane whirred down and smacked off my desk. The noise made me blink. There was deathly silence followed by a soft voice.

            “Tau,” Shillman stated quietly, sitting at the back of the class.

            Feeney seemed startled that Shillman knew the answer.

            “That’s right,” Feeney whispered, “Tau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.” He pointed the cane at the cross on the board before roaring: “Note its similarity to the crucifix. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Christ Himself, spelling the end of the Jewish way of life and the beginning of a new tradition. But the Day of Judgement is soon to be upon us and we must be ready and willing to deliver ourselves up to the Lord.”

            Our headmaster Father Brinkler had told us two days before that we were blessed to have our new Religion and Science teacher. According to Brinkler, Father Feeney had lectured for some time at Pennsylvania State University and had returned home because he felt his vocation was to better edify the young of his native country. We heard far more nefarious reasons for Father Feeney’s return. They involved a brief spell in prison, a move from Penn State to the state pen. Nobody knew the real motive behind Father Feeney’s return to Ireland. He was very secretive. He often boiled concoctions from his desk at the blackboard in the science laboratory and never told us what he was cooking.

            He told us that the reason for the West’s alliance with Israel was so that God’s true chosen people could watch the Jews burn on the Day of Judgement. He didn’t claim these views to be his own; he said that even President Kennedy, himself a good Catholic, knew that Armageddon would bring with it the wrath of God wherein only the true followers of Jesus would be rewarded and the Jews would fall prey to the blistering heat of Hell.

            He introduced us to the work of Meister Eckhart, “a great, uncompromising and often misinterpreted thinker.” There was a glint in his eye as he said this, but I didn’t care much for any theologian that caused Father Feeney apparent delight.

            One morning, when he was in a reasonably pleasant mood, Shillman asked him if the world was going to end on the last day of 1999. Father Feeney told him that it wasn’t God who had created the calendar, but Man on the basis of God’s design, and God didn’t follow anyone’s calendar but His own cosmic clock.

            Then his mood suddenly shifted.

            “What would a boy like you be doing asking such a question about the Apocalypse?” he said, and he told Shillman to come to the top of the class and bend over to receive six of the best.

            We watched as he shoved Shillman over the chair and he lashed his back with the cane. Shillman’s eyes filled with tears. I felt shame that I wasn’t receiving the punishment. Any one of us could have asked the question, and it was just the arbitrary nature of Feeney’s temper that meant that Shillman was the victim this time.

            In October, there was to be a dance to mark the first schoolboys’ match of the season. On the morning of the dance, my father was poring over the newspaper at the kitchen table. He seemed sick with worry as he explained that Kennedy had failed in his efforts to prevent Khrushchev from retaining his Russian missiles in Cuba.

            “I’m glad for once that your mother isn’t alive to see this,” he said.

            I told him about the dance then. He gave me a half crown and told me not to stay out too late. As I was leaving the house I swiped three cigarettes from the packet on the mantelpiece.

            The dance started after the match with a jig from Mairéad Mulryan, the fourteen-year-old Feis winner who was coveted by every boy of a certain age, including me. She pointed her toe out as the music began, prancing lithely, her blond ringlets bouncing off her shoulders. Her eyes sparkled with a coy innocence.

            There was rowdy applause for Mairéad’s jig. Shillman whistled, and he was snatched by Father Brinkler and dragged from the hall, never to return. Each boy was paired with a girl and we were told to form groups of eight. My heart pounded as Mairéad Mulryan came to my side, her head craning over mine. She was at least twelve inches taller than I was. I went bright red as she took my hand in hers and squeezed it and didn’t let go.

            “Maybe we should try and swap with people who are closer to our heights,” I suggested foolishly.

            She gave me a displeased look and said snottily:

            “I think you’ll find that that’s against the rules.”

            The music started and we began to dance.

            Afterwards, I got a glass of orange and met up with Derek O’Callaghan, surreptitiously showing him my cigarettes. We left our drinks on the table and went to the outhouse and entered a cubicle. I gave Derek one of the cigarettes. He pursed it between his lips and struck a match off the wall. He held the match up to the tip and sucked. He gasped, and coughed loudly before pulling the cigarette from his mouth. He threw the match away and sucked on the cigarette again when he had regained his composure. His eyes closed involuntarily as a cat’s do when being groomed by its owner. I watched for a few moments as he became more and more used to the cigarette, until finally, he looked like John Wayne. Then his legs gave out and he fell back onto the toilet.

            “The world feels awful funny,” he said as he stared into space.

            “Are ye smoking in there?” came a shrill voice from outside the cubicle, and my heart jumped.

            “It’s one of the nuns!” I hissed, and Derek got up and threw the cigarette into the bowl. We pulled the chain and the butt whirled down into the toilet and disappeared.

            I pulled the door ajar, and looked to see Mairéad Mulryan peering in at me.

            “Oh, Mairéad,” I said, relieved, and I released the door to let it swing slowly outwards.

            “Are ye smoking?” she said again, looking at me and then at Derek.

            “Yes, we were just having a bit of a pick-me-up,” Derek said, when he saw who it was.

            “Could I cadge a fag off ye?” she said.

            I smiled.

            “I think you’ll find that that’s against the rules,” I said, and she squeezed into the cubicle with the pair of us and locked the door again.

            I watched Derek and Mairéad smoke. Mairéad’s eyes hardly left mine as she expertly inhaled each drag. Then she flicked the butt into the toilet with a marksman’s precision and a hiss.

            As we were making our way back across the courtyard, we saw Father Feeney and Shillman coming in from the school gates.

            “Mother of God, children, come here!” Feeney roared, and he approached, dragging Shillman behind him. “Come with me immediately!”

            We followed Feeney back out through the gates, watching as he walked up a lane that ran alongside the school towards the woods.

            “Don’t you see it?” he cried, his silhouette pointing at the moon.

            I looked at the moon but I saw nothing untoward in its appearance.

            “Come on!” Feeney ordered, and Shillman, Mairéad, Derek and I followed him through the darkness, stumbling over roots as we continued up the hill. We came to the mouth of one of the local caves. It began to drizzle as Feeney retrieved a kerosene lamp from somewhere and lit it. We plunged into the darkness, Feeney leading the way. It felt like a death march into hell.

            At the back of the cave, Feeney sat down and instructed us to do the same.

            “We’ll be protected from the fallout,” he said.

            In the lamplight, I could see his face. There was drool hanging from his lips, swinging back and forth from the corners of his mouth. He looked mesmerised.

            “Did you see the colour of the moon?” he said at last.

            “It looked all right to me, sir,” Derek said.

            “Kennedy must have failed, God rest him. Shillman saw it, didn’t you, Shillman?” Feeney asked.

            “It seemed a little odd, sir, just a slightly different colour,” Shillman replied.

            “It was red!” Feeney insisted, “Red, I tell you. From the fallout.”

            There was a peal of thunder, and Feeney bolted forward in fright, hitting his head off the roof of the cave.

            “They’ve taken out London!” he cried. “Too near for us to survive for much longer. We’ll have to act now.” He sat down again and pulled his spectacles case from his pocket. There were a number of white pills in it. He took one between his trembling finger and thumb and tossed it into his mouth.

            “Now, my children, we’ll all be saved,” he said, looking at us with fiery intent in the flickering light. He handed Shillman a pill. “Take that and eat it.”

            Shillman put it into his mouth and swallowed.

            He handed one each to me, Derek and Mairéad. “Eat them. Eat them and they will give you a far greater oneness with being than you could ever imagine,” he insisted.

            I put it in my mouth and Feeney closed his eyes. I spat it out quietly in my hand and looked at Derek and Mairéad. I shook my head at them but they knew not to take the pills. Shillman’s head fell forward onto his chest and he went to sleep. Feeney’s heavy breathing slowed and became less pronounced until finally I was sure it had stopped altogether. Derek reached over silently and held Shillman’s wrist in his hand for a few moments. He released it and blessed himself.

            I don’t know how long we stayed there for, but it wasn’t long.

            They searched Father Feeney’s lab after his death. Numerous powders and tablets were sent to England for tests. He had taken it upon himself, in his drug-induced state, to save a few of us, as well as himself, from the horrors of a nuclear winter and its subsequent radiation poisoning.

            But the Apocalypse had been imagined.

            Derek, Mairéad and I stood together as Shillman’s brothers and uncles carried his coffin into the synagogue. His mother was at the head of the procession, and she looked at us with wet cheeks, her expression full of accusation, as she followed the coffin in. I was riddled with guilt, my stomach tight, and my eyes fell to my shoes as Mairéad’s hand found mine and squeezed it and didn’t let go.

Richard Gibney

'Richard Gibney is from Dublin. His short fiction has reached a number of shortlists in literary and fiction contests. He is currently seeking an agent for his novel.'

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