Soft Targets

victory. Donny felt victorious as well. No one had asked him, but wherever they needed to go he was willing, especially cupped in the leather seat behind the wheel of the BMW. He'd take them clear to New Haven, if that was what they wanted. But they wanted Denver.

Denver, for Christ's sake! That was just one stop short of Mars, to Donny Flynn. And his father was willing! Perhaps `willing' was too strong a word, but he was going to permit it, Donny sought one of his new phrases—sure as flies on dog dirt.

Last night then, Friday, Donny's father had drilled him on ice conditions, tire pressures, uses of a credit card, and—repeatedly—on vari­ous cautions when riding with strangers. Donny reflected that Da spent more time talking with him that evening, while the micks were out buy­ing clothes with Flynn money, than he had spent in any previous month Donny could recall. It almost gave Donny a feeling of being dear, val­ued, even loved. For a wild moment he consid­ered saying the hell with it, he'd stay home and maybe talk with the old man sometimes in the evenings, but Donny Flynn sensed that it would not, could not turn out that way. The flesh had its patterns; he knew they would not talk like this many times.

Donny had not helped load the car that night, but packed food and cans of juice into a cardboard box as McTaggart swaggered back and forth to the car, wearing his new trenchcoat even though the weather was mild. Donny packed a single bag for himself, swiped Da's driving gloves and both pairs of sunglasses.

Finally, this morning, well before light, Donny had hurried to warm up the car. Presently Flaherty padded out, followed by McTaggart. Da waved for Donny, who left the car idling and ran up the steps. McTaggart was arranging packages in the back seat. Flaherty was staring toward the house. Donny was about to enter the house but found that Da wanted him to stay there in full view.

In the predawn he could see, on Da's face, a look he had not seen since the funeral in '71. The father put his hands on the son's shoulders, gripped them, seemed about to embrace Donny. He said, quietly, 'I can't counsel ye further than this, boy, but if ye ever listen to advice, listen now.' There was little of the pure Irish in his voice; it was his Da, but burdened with some new yet old and unspeakable dread. 'Break no laws, even speed laws. Don't argue with those two. Think of them as grown children. Your job is to drive, nothing more. Nothing more, d'ye understand?'

Donny nodded, wincing under the steely grip. After a moment his father continued. 'Maybe I'm lending ye to them for your own sake, maybe just for mine. I don't know. But the bargain is just for driving. Whatever ye do, do not let either of them put a weapon into your hands.'

Donny nodded again.

'Swear it.' The grip was excruciating.

'I swear to God I won't, Da,^' said Donny Flynn, wondering why his father's face made him want to cry.

'Ye've sworn it, Donegal Flynn,' his father said, and then released him. A gentle fist tapped his bicep. 'Ye know our telephone number, if it comes to that. Keep the credit card in your pocket. An' now, get yer arse out to Route Ninety-five afore the weekend rush.'

At first Donny was too busy driving to pay attention to his passengers. Once on the interstate route, he began to listen. McTaggart, nursing a bottle of booze, luxuriated in leather cushions and entertained himself with an endless curse on American luxury. Bunch of girnin' soft cunts they were, aye, who'd risk nobbut filthy fookin' money fer the cause.

Occasionally Flaherty responded, snoozing, his legs stretched out as he slumped in the rear seat gloom. Once Donny tried to join in by agree­ing. They ignored him. Boozing and snoozing, they ignored Donny's route past Pawtucket and Providence, ignored his brief panic on the stretch of ice outside Warwick. It was not until he suggested a stop at New London, trying to invent some clever phrase from the bits and pieces he had collected, that they stopped ignor­ing him. He made the mistake of referring to them as oul sods.

The open-handed slap across the back of his head made Donny swerve, sent bright gobbets of light dancing across his vision. 'What the fuck kind of answer is that,' he yelled, half turning.

'The kind ye earn, ye wee bastid,' Flaherty piped, 'callin' yer betters sods.' Flaherty would have made a good soprano, Donny thought, but a lousy debater.

McTaggart started to cackle, understanding the problem, explaining at great length between swigs that the oul sod was holy, but a couple of oul sods were sodomites. He did not blame Donny for his mistake. He did not blame Fla­herty, either. Flaherty had made no mistake. Flaherty had simply made his point in a way that even a wee lad could not fail to remember. Donny Flynn shook his head to clear it, and remembered.

In Newark they bought the biggest, most grossly oleaginous giantburgers the micks had ever seen, and Donny located two fresh bottles of John Jameson. Donny perceived something ritualized in their insistence on that particular whiskey from that particular part of Ireland, did not understand, and knew better than to ask. For one thing, McTaggart was so smashed he could not have interceded if Flaherty had fancied some fresh offense by Donny.

Donny wondered if the leather seats would ever be the same after McTaggart dropped his giantburger on his fly and, in a rage, ground the mess into the seat before hurling the debris from his window. It was shaping up to be a great little trip, thought Donny.

The following day, Sunday, Donny found it necessary to tell McTaggart about antilitter laws as they sped across Virginia. McTaggart cared fuck-all about that until Donny explained about the highway patrol cruisers that blossomed in thousands across the land like winter wildflow­ers, sitting in hidden spots to surprise the jaded traveler. Flaherty said nothing, only patting the Christmas package, nearly as long as his arm, that Donny had seen carried from his father's hobby room.

McTaggart saw the gesture. 'None o' that, ye eejit,' he cautioned, laughing; 'yell have a chance in Colorado, by Jasus, an' not afore.'

Monday, the whiskey consumed, Donny tried to find more John J. in St. Louis, feeling more like a nursemaid to grown men at every futile stop. Bushmill's was heretical, any Scotch just as bad. Donny bought two gray stoneware jugs of local Platte Valley straight corn and smiled at the sight of the two provos, slouching in new but outdated trenchcoats, cradling their booze and swilling it even as they reviled it. They looked wholly harmless, old- faced children in Sam Spade suits, playing at some unfathomable in­ternational game. Donny wondered if their mis­sion was to pick up money from some Denver Hibernian Relief fund. He was a little vague on that; couldn't they do it by mail? Or maybe they were carrying money to Denver, hundreds and thousands of dollars or pounds or whatever, in those packages. Couriers of the night, Donny thought, teasing himself with it. Maybe he was a key piece in some enormous intrigue. Maybe, while the BMW purred across central Missouri, cornfields a ragtag stubble in the hard snow-blown earth around him, Donny Flynn was a romantic figure.

He felt a chill blast of air on his scalp and sighed, expecting McTaggart to dump another load of trash along the deserted stretch. Then he heard a giggle. The next instant he was dodging hot brass casings amid a hail of small explosions inside the car. 'Steady on, boyo,' McTaggart slurred happily as the BMW lurched across the shoulder of the road, Donny slapping at the spent casing that sizzled between his collar and his neck.

It was a very close miss as Donny turned the wheel into the slide, waited for the Michelins to grip—or for the blue missile to plummet down into the cold dead cornfields below them.

At length, Donny could speak again, so shaken he did not care whether Flaherty liked it or not. 'You gotta warn me, goddammit,' he pleaded, trying to see what was happening be-hind him. 'I thought I'd been shot.'

'Had ta check out the oul persuader, lad,' McTaggart crooned, fiddling with a small automatic weapon. 'Yer da keeps nice toys an' he knows his wurruk, but I had ta check on it, d'ye see? Away on, Donegal Flynn, an' it's a foine thing ye're doin' fer the cause, me lovin' lad.'

Donny knew what one of the packages con­tained, now. And knew why his father had called him 'Donegal', a name reserved for use under only the most serious possible circumstances. At every kilometer sign, Donny wished more devoutly that he was back home and away from these knotheaded assholes. It would make a great story, holy Mary it would make him a legend on the streets, only nobody would believe a fourth of it. But in the meantime, he must endure close company with men he wouldn't introduce to a wino. He tried to make himself smaller in the driver's seat, experiencing an unfamiliar emo­tion, neither fear nor anger. It was embarrass­ment.

How could you reconcile their professional standing in a holy cause with the swaggering boozing carelessness of this pair? Maybe you couldn't. Maybe this arrogant self-destructive romantic stupidity was the rule, not the excep­tion, which could've been a hell of a good reason why Da had left Ireland to begin with. One sure thing, McTaggart and Flaherty were the kind of friends your enemies would gladly donate. Why shit, they were worse than