You always remember your first true love.
Well, thats what they said, and Feargal McPherson was not one to disbelieve the Almighty They. Anyway, he saw no point in arguing. His first love had been his last, his only, and he didnt give a crap about that New Age philosophy.
He'd first met Caroline O'Faolain at a wedding.
Well, he hadn't really met her, not yet. He was a gawky kid of fourteen in a suit two sizes too big with acne splotches and a nose that didnt fit him yet. Nothing fit him at that stage, and he sometimes felt like a puppy, falling over his feet, shaking his ass instead of his tail while he tripped over sagging ears. Give the lad a few years, his uncles said. Give the lad a few years and he'll grow inta himself. But that hadn't happened yet, and for now he was a scrawny Pepperoni Puppy standing with his brothers and sneaking a beer and checking out the bridesmaids in their stiff yellow dresses, whispering how fucking beautiful their tits were, straining against the fabric and imagining what great lays they would be. Mostly, they looked for Caroline O'Faolain.
They didn't know why. Caroline wasn't really gorgeous, not even really beautiful, but there was something in her big watery gray eyes and that nose that formed a little ball on the end that stayed in boys minds when they wanked themselves to sleep, something in her slightly crooked smile that made grown men feel underage. She was seventeen, and the oldest daughter of Bobby O'Faolain, a coworker of Feargal's father. Bobby O'Faolain had eight sons that looked like him-- short, stocky, with savage gleams in their eyes that spoke of insanity and murder. The O'Faolain brothers and their two sisters, Caroline and Kathlyn, had been born nine months apart from the one before-- bam bam bam, an assembly line of OFaolains crammed into three floors of a block of flats on D'Olier Street where the smell of fish and saltwater stayed in the rugs and where neighbourhood heavies and old ladies came to ask for help.
There were nine O'Faolain men, six O'Faolain wives, two O'Faolain sisters and twelve O'Faolain grandchildren in the immediate family, and they had maybe twenty-three words of English between them. They were Travelers who'd settled down, Tinkers, Pykies, Gypsies, and Feargals father warned his four sons and three daughters that if he caught wind of them within a metre of that house, or saw them talking to any member of that Godforsaken Pykie family, they'd live to sorely regret it. The McPherson children had taken the words to heart, but that still hadnt stopped Feargal and his older brothers from glancing over the heads of the crowd to spy on the Pykie Princess.
She'd been sitting at the edge of the room, giggling and talking to her sister Kathlyn, tight little body curving under a blue dress with little white buttons. Feargal knew hed never forget that dress, never forget how it draped over her bony little shoulders and pooled in her lap, the little nubs of plastic dotting her front. It was a cheap dress, he could tell that, but she was a fucking queen in it, he could feel it whisper against her skin, feel it slide over her collarbones with that slimy slickness that comes from a cheap dress.

Feargal stared at her from across the room, through the jumping bodies and the amber glasses. He didn't know what told him to say this to her, but it felt good and it felt right and he focused his energy on her bony hands and long neck, focused on her cloudy eyes and white little teeth.

Look at me, look at this skinny kid in the suit two sizes too big, look at the kid with the crooked teeth and the sprinklings of acne like pepperoni. Look at me. Acknowledge me and I'll love you the rest of my life.

And she did.
It wasn't a Romeo and Juliet glance where one look seals the stars and fate's set into motions, Hell no. They were two strangers at a wedding, now fifth cousins twice removed or complicated shit hed never understood. She still talked to Kathlyn in that awkward language, but her eyes slid over to the other side of the room, and she caught that gaze, she caught that hungry intensity. Years later she would tell her children shed felt a wave, a buzz that pricked her skin, made her turn her head. She'd ridden that wave. Then the great monsters of her brothers came, and collected the sisters and stamped out the door, masses of men pressed together in an impenetrable block.
But Feargal had penetrated that block, even for a moment, a flash in time, and he knew the wave, once in motion, could never break.

Feargal McPherson had two years to grow up, and he didn't fuck around with it. The change had come so quickly that he'd woken up one morning with a voice three octaves deeper than last night's while his acne cleared up at fifteen, never to return. The suit that had been so ill-fitting two short years ago pinched around the collar, his shoes cramped his toes into balls. By sixteen, Feargal McPherson was a man, and he was intent on proving his position in the neighbourhood. On his sixteenth birthday hed got a tattoo, a monster in black, a cross that extended like wings over his shoulder blades and up his neck, a knot in the centre forming a single word: Trust.
He'd been likable but not popular in school-- too many people were afraid of him to want to sit next to him at lunch, and he was perfectly content with that. He wanted people to be afraid, he wanted them to whisper and avert their eyes, because out of fear came respect, and out of respect came trust. He had those Black Irish looks, all dark slick-back hair and a nose that finally, thank God, fit. There was something in the eyes, maybe, that caused people to fear him. They were icy, a cold blue that cultivated into a piercing stare that could make a dockworker's balls shrink into his stomach, and he'd taught himself to stop blinking for up to a minute to heighten the effect. He was the bad boy in class, but not the one caught for carving up desks and spitting at the teacher, Hell no, he was too good for that and he knew it. Feargal McPherson was a catalyst, content to sit quietly in the back of the classroom while the fight he'd so carefully set up between the lout that had left his sister with bruises and his best mate raged on in the front. When the two boys had been separated, with black eyes and bloody lips the blame ultimately wormed its way back to Feargal and he would speak to the teachers with even tones-- yes sir, no ma'am, sorry to hear that, too bad-- while that hard blue stare focused on them with all its cold fire burning. That stare was something that haunted teachers as they tried to fall asleep, seeped into their brains as they opened the doors in the morning. That kid was bad trouble, they'd say. Watch out for that one.
Feargal enjoyed school, and was sorry when he'd graduated. It hadn't been the education hed like-- what use would he have for logarithms and the circumference of Mercury anyway? What he had enjoyed was the surge of raw power that coursed through his body and his brain when he strode into the classroom and saw the teachers shrink away, saw the football hooligans twice his size glance up at him with utmost respect, saw the girls hike up their skirts as he approached. Feargal had a smile that the girls loved, and had broken more hearts and hymens in his second year of grammar school than the football team combined. Mark Hagen and his four bothers, five thick headed and thick-bodied hooligans that spent more time in detention than class were his devoted followers-- they, the ones that had picked on the scrawny Pepperoni Puppy, the ones that had called his Da a drunk and his Mam a slut, they now followed at his beck and call, trembled when his gaze became dark and his mouth turned down at the edges. They called him Fear now, and it was a name that fit him, and he liked. Fear was a trade, and he was one of the greatest dealers he knew.
The second time Feargal McPherson saw Caroline O'Faolain was at a funeral.
Some acquaintance of his father's had died-- heart attack, a rare occurrence in their crowd-- and St. Patrick's was crammed with McPhersons, O'Reillys, Connors and Fitzpatricks. A few stood in the back, their arms and ankles secured with long jangling chain and surrounded by somber men in starched blue uniforms, stone-faced under their hexagonal hats with shiny leather brims. Those hats burned in Feargal's mind, his throat burning as if hed been punched. It was disrespectful, and it made him burn.
He'd heard Caroline before hed seen her. He wasn't sure how hed heard her, maybe it was teenage radar, his dick a flesh antennae set to pick up the slightest whiff of estrogen. But he'd heard that voice dipping in and out and curving around the melodic clip of a language that was Feargal's birthright and what he couldn't understand. Then hed seen the back of her head three pews ahead, brown hair brushed back, spilling over her bony shoulders, clad in another cheap dress, this one a deep burgundy. Strange that she should be wearing burgundy to a funeral, but he didn't disapprove of this. He couldn't bring himself to disapprove of it.
The wave began to pulse in the back of Feargal's mind, the wave that started burning in his dick and coursed through his spine before exploding into his head where he could focus it and direct it to giggling schoolgirls, who glanced over their books with a blush, crossing their legs slightly so the pleated tartan slipped over their thighs, bunched around their tight little asses. He focused the wave on the back of Caroline's head, putting more effort into it than he'd cared to in the past, straining so hard the back of his eyes began to pull and little bursts of light crackled in front of his face like the sparklers his aunt gave him once on St. Patrick's Day.

The crackling light danced in front of his face brighter, harder as he stared into the back of her brown head, willing her to hear him.

Look at me, look at the man with the tattoo on his neck, look at the kid that owns the Hagens. Feargal James Paul McPherson. Acknowledge my presence. Look at me.

Caroline turned, those stone-gray eyes stared into his, and a small smile crept onto her face. Her hand raised a little, and three little fingers waved briefly at him before she turned back to face the priest.
Feargal was in love with Caroline. He knew then that he was in love with her and that'd he'd always be in love with her. He knew that when he fell asleep at night it would be her face burning under his eyelids, he knew that her name would be thr first thing he said in the morning. He would love her if she was fat and old and ugly. He would love her if thick hair sprouted from her ears and she spat up tobacco phlegm and called him a worthless son of a bitch. He would love her until he died, until his corpse rotted into mold. The worms that crawled through his flesh would love her.
He hadn't even known it until now.
He'd never met her, only seen her across the room, seen her pass on the street, buy milk at the corner store Da sometimes worked in, but he knew he loved her. He was just too chickenshit to say anything to her-- that was it, he didn't care that she only spoke Gaelic, he would have found a way around that, but he was too chickenshit to walk up to her and tell her. Not anymore. The fingers has cinched it. When he saw those three skinny fingers, all bone and white skin wiggling at him like dead twigs, his head dropped into his heart and his heart into his balls and the whole mess thudded to the ground, coming to rest somewhere between his feet. At the wake, held in some relative's house, whose he didn't remember or care, hed summoned the courage, summoned the words and asked her to dance. She didn't understand him, but she smiled and somehow he knew the rest of his life was sealed.


She'd cried afterward.
It was strange, he wasn't used to seeing tears and he suddenly felt incredibly guilty that he'd let his balls direct his head instead of the other way around. He'd never felt guilty before, but as she sat on the edge of the bed, her hair wet and sticking to her face, blood spotting the sheet between her thighs while tears rolled silently down her cheeks, he felt that old familiar knife twisting in his heart, the one that came on Monday nights when Da reeled in smelling like whiskey, Mam screaming at him until three in the morning. He suddenly wanted to puke and run away, but his mind screamed that he was a man, Goddamn it, and to stop acting like a scared little boy.
So he'd stammered excuses and apologies, each sounding lamer than the last and none in a language she could understand. He apologised for being such a bastard, he told her that he didn't know, never could have guessed until her nails had tightened around his neck and she'd cried out in pain while he felt something give way inside her. He apologised for breathing, for living, for everything under the sun, because he just didn't know what else to say except

I'm a bastard, I fucked up, I'm so Goddamn sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you, you have to believe that I'll never hurt you again, Jesus God, believe that cos it's the Gods-honest truth. I'll make this up to you somehow. I'll make it all better.

He opened his mouth to say something else, something about how if she wanted him to jump in front of a train he would because he couldn't stand to see her crying, couldn't stand to know how much she hated him, but he found her fingers pressed to his lips and the words became stillborn. She sniffed, the round tip of her nose flushed crimson, and then she gave a wavering, tight lipped smile through the sheen still covering her cheeks, and Feargal knew that it was forgiven.

The knock came at eleven-thirty-seven on a Monday night, loud and obtrusive on the thin wood door of the McPherson flat. Mary McPherson was in the kitchen, the hiss of her iron punctuating the Dean Martin floating from the tinny radio perched next to the kettle. "Get t'a door!" she yelled through the small hallway to the bedroom her two youngest sons shared. "Probably yer fahter. An y'tell 'im he comes back like t'is again, I'll iron 'is Goddamn face..."
Feargal and Malcolm had exchanged glances across the narrow gulf between their beds as the pounding continued. It was Monday night, time for Da to get paid and hit the pubs with his friends, reeling in at God awful hours stinking of Wild Turkey and cigar smoke-- C'mon, boys, give ya old manna hug. But this wasn't three a.m., it was eleven-thirty-seven...eleven-thirty-eight now, and the banging was angrier, harder than anything they'd heard before.
Feargal McPherson had been the one to get up, been the one to shrug a shirt over his tattoos and newfound muscle, the one to walk across the cheap yellow rug, little dirty nubs under his shoes. He'd been the one to open the door, and he'd been the one to see Caroline standing outside, her cheeks wet and nose red, surrounded by her eight brothers. Feargal had been the one to look up into Eamon O'Faolain's flaming eyes, and he had been the one who flew back into the wall behind him, hearing the portrait of the pope rattling above him. Feargal had been the one to feel his nose smash back into his face, he'd been the one to see the thick rivers of blood streaming down his chin and he'd been the one to see Caroline cry out, grab her brother's arm, pleading.
Feargal McPherson had been the one to be grabbed by Ryan and Harry O'Faolain, had been the one pushed into the back of Mickey O'Faolain's dented black DeSoto, the one driven to St. Peter of the Rock Church and thrown inside. He had been the one to march to the altar, the glare of twelve O'Faolain's stabbing into him while Caroline stood stoically beside him, sniffing. Feargal had been the one to have a ring shoved on his finger, a little too big, had been the one to numbly agree with whatever the stone-faced priest intoned, blood dripping onto the floor and his head throbbing, packed with cotton. He had been the one to kiss Caroline with bloody lips, been the one forced back into the DeSoto next to her, silent as the grave on the back seat.
Feargal McPherson had been the one driven to the three-floor block of flats on D'Olier Street, been the one to be dragged through the front doors, through the living room packed with cheap furniture, up the stairs to the first floor. He had been the one to be pushed in a back room full of shoes and old magazines, the one to sit on the edge of the bed, his head throbbing and his body feeling a million miles away.
Caroline sniffed and ran the back of her bony hand across the tip of her red nose, sputtering words he couldn't understand. Then she grabbed his hand and pressed it against her belly, taut and quivering under the lavender dress, clammy with night cold and then he suddenly understood, he understood his broken nose and Caroline's tears, he understood the ring that wobbled unsteadily on his finger and the look of hate on her brother's faces.
Feargal McPherson had been The One.