Knock Wood

by Noah Brand

Yeah, "luck of the Irish," I've heard it. I swear, sometimes I want to change my name to Jones just so people can't tell. Ah well, at least it isn't O'Something. I'd get no rest.

Sorry, I don't mean to snap at you. Maybe I've had one too many. Really? Well, that's kind of you to say. What the hell, one more won't do any harm.

But no, you're right, I do catch the breaks a lot. The business, and...well, you know. And if I'm gonna be honest, and no, really, I might as well, it is because I'm Irish. Well, partly. Long story.

Well, okay. No, okay, fine, you want to hear it, okay. Just don't get mad at me if you don't believe it. It's about my great-grandfather, Michael Fitzwallace. A hundred-and-change years ago, he was the baddest son of a bitch in County Cork. No kidding. My grandma had this photo of him, and he had these big knobbly hands and shoulders like a tractor. And, you know, he just had that look. That street fighter look, something in how he stood or...I dunno.

So yeah, Michael was stronger than hell, worked twelve hours a day, and everyone for twenty miles knew better than to say a cross word to him or he'd smack you so hard you'd shit teeth. But he was the unluckiest bastard in Ireland. Man could not catch a break. He'd get a few bucks together...okay, pounds, whatever, point is, he'd get a little money and try to put it in something safe. A business, a bank, a mattress. No matter what, he'd lose it. The business would fail, the bank would close, the mattress would catch fire. A relative would get sick and need the money, or he'd loan it to a sure-looking risk who'd drop dead and leave a black hole of unpaid bills and fuck-all else.

Wasn't just money, either. He'd miss opportunities for better jobs or good times by every dumb freak accident you ever heard of. He once lost a girl to a combination of three separate riding accidents, a sudden storm, and a pub that closed two hours early for no known reason. He got to the point where anyone who so much as mentioned the word "luck" to him was taking their life in their hands.

Then one day, Michael looks around and it's Christmas Eve, and he's got barely the price for a glass of cheer. No one to give him a gift or roast a goose, and no one he could do the same for, even if he could afford it. So he's down at the pub cornering the beer market on a tab he can't pay and hears a knock from the table next to him. He looks over and it's an out-of-towner in, I kid you not, a tweed suit and pince-nez glasses. A professor, if you will, from Dublin. And he just knocked on the table like he was hoping it'd open.

"What're you knocking for?" asks Michael, in no mood.

"Knocking wood," says the professor, "for luck."

Everyone in the place stops breathing, naturally. Sure, this guy was a Dubliner, but nobody wants to see a man beat to death on Christmas Eve.

"Luck, is it?" says Michael. "And how's that good luck? How's rapping your knuckles on a pub table going to change your fortunes?"

"Well," replies the professor, and the story goes he didn't look at all nervous, so he was either pretty oblivious or completely fearless. "It's an old belief that bad luck's caused by evil spirits, and the evil spirits are frightened off by the sound of a sharp rap on wood."

Now, everyone was expecting Michael's next words to come in the form of a punch, but instead he says, "Is that true?"

All the professor says is, "It does no harm, anyway." But Michael's up out of his chair and out the door fast enough that his tracks smoke. He heads back to his cottage and gets his father's old walking stick, the hardest and knobbiest length of wood you ever saw, and then sets out for the churchyard. He was near-on as fast as he was strong and he was plenty strong, so he made it just as the bell began tolling midnight.

Now, it's well-known that on Christmas Eve the line between our world and the next becomes a good deal more negotiable; don't give me that fucking look. You wanted to hear this story, and this is what happened. So he goes to the churchyard as the bell starts tolling, and sure enough, spirits are thick on the place. Dead folk, wee folk, demons, and I damn well told you about that look, and all milling around like it's a party.

So Michael walks right in like he was invited and the first thing he sees is the spirit that closed that pub two hours early. You tell the truth at Christmas, see, and no one in that churchyard could hide what they'd done that year. So this pub-closing spirit looks up at Michael like he's trying to remember his name, and without a word Michael whips that heavy stick upside the spirit's head. The spirit drops to the ground and Michael kicks him in the kidneys, or whatever spirits have there.

This causes a bit of a commotion, and someone grabs Michael's arm, and damn if it's not the spirit that struck down the fellow that had been going to stake Michael in his own business. Michael did what anyone would do: kicked him in the crotch so hard he left a boot lace behind. Now things were getting downright awkward, and Michael sees this spirit trying to slink away quiet-like, and of course it's the one that busted the leg on a fourteen-to-one sure winner, so Michael takes that stick to his spine like he's swinging for the bleachers.

Well, I won't belabor the point, but he stayed in that churchyard until dawn, finding every spirit he could that had messed him up in the past year, and beat every one of 'em so hard their grannies felt it. And just before the cock crew, he said "I'm Michael Fitzwallace, and if any of you bastards cross my path again you'll damn well regret it!"

That's where things started to turn around for him. All his work and sweat started to really pay off, though a few things still went against him. Come next Christmas Eve, he was back in that churchyard, stick in hand, pounding the bejesus out of the spirits that either hadn't heard or had missed the point. And the Christmas after that, as well. That was all it took, though. He married well, made enough money to get the hell out of Ireland and move here, and from there, he never caught another bad break. He beat those poor ghosts hard enough that from that day to this, they've steered well clear of our whole family.

So like I say, it is 'cause I'm Irish, but it's nothing to do with luck. Just a mean streak a hundred years old and a hundred miles wide.

Yeah, well, you fucking asked.

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