Ghost Dance by Mark T. Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page B

glowing from lamps to conquer the dusk in the corners. His fondest memories of his mother were of Agnes hunt-and-peck typing on her old Smith Corona in her small office off the living room, smoking menthol Kents and sipping from a Bloody Mary.
    Agnes was not a very affectionate mother. That is not to say she neglected Gallagher or abused him physically. She did not. But she rarely hugged or kissed him, unless she was drunk. And like most children of alcoholics, Gallagher soon learned the hollowness of liquor-induced emotion.
    To her credit, Agnes did instill in Gallagher a great love of books. She taught him to read when he was four—in part, he believed, as a way to keep him occupied while she worked. Be that as it may, books became Gallagher’s refuge from the warm and nurturing environment he was raised in.
    By the time Gallagher turned fourteen, the bottle had completely consumed his father. There was no single, dramatic incident that precipitated Seamus’ decline, just a steady accumulation of setbacks—jail twice during antiwar protests, a string of lost cases, government harassment—that triggered benders that caused more setbacks and so on in a great downward spiral.
    One afternoon when Gallagher was fifteen, he happened to board the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn after a class trip to the Museum of Natural History. It had been one of the best days of his life. The class had heard a talk from one of the curators about masks from the Dogon tribe of Mali in western Africa. The lecturer had spoken about the Dogon belief that both humans and animals have a soul substance called Nyama which returns after death in a mask such as the four-foot carved bird face he held up for all to see. The masks could be used to drive away the souls of the deceased who might harm the living.
    Gallagher had left the talk enthralled by the idea that people in primitive cultures all over the world had explanations of why we exist and what happens after we die. It was that day Gallagher decided to study anthropology.
    But when he got into the subway car with his classmates and his teacher, Gallagher was shocked to see his father slumped in a stupor in one of the seats. Seamus sang gibberish to the window, then raised a finger to his own reflection and spouted off a line from his closing argument in the school-prayer case. Several of Gallagher’s classmates, who did not recognize Seamus, began to snicker and make jokes about the crazy drunk. Seamus’ head turned and his eyes focused on them before refocusing on his son. Gallagher turned away from his father, acted as if he did not know who he was and laughed out loud with the other boys.
    A week later Gallagher came home from high school to find the front door unlocked. The shades were drawn and the lights were off. The thermometer had been turned down. Seamus liked a cold house.
    Agnes had told Gallagher the night before that she’d be spending her deadline day at the magazine offices. He went through the house raising the shades and turning on the lights one by one until he reached the kitchen. It looked like it had when he left early for school—strewn with post-party scud: cigarette-filled ashtrays, half-empty glasses, empty bottles.
    Gallagher cleaned the glasses, emptied the ashtrays and tossed the beer and vodka bottles into the trash. It took him about forty minutes to complete that fond ritual. Then he poured out the remaining vodka so his parents would have to suffer a trip to the corner store. It was his daily act of rebellion.
    Finished, Gallagher climbed the stairs to begin studying. As he passed his parents’ bedroom he glanced to the left.
    Seamus hung by the neck from a rope he’d slung from a heating pipe. He left no note.
    There was a public memorial where all the people with whom Seamus had worked on various causes before his downfall showed up and praised him. And raised toasts to him in the pub afterward. The actual burial took place with just Gallagher and his