by Roddy Doyle
—Ready, she said.
—I shot him in the back of the head, I said.
—Provoked.
—No.
—You had to have a reason for killing the guy.
—I did, I said.—I was told to.
I slept that night in a tepee. There were two of them outside the perimeter fence of the fort. The tepees were real, but just there for background. I crawled into one, with a thin grey blanket I’d found in the back of a truck - it had been folded around a case full of lightbulbs. It was dark now, hours since the last of the film people had gone to their rooms at the trading post, somewhere off on the other side of the dust.
I lay down.
I wasn’t alone. I knew it like I used to know it, with the fast, smooth certainty that had often kept me alive.
I saw eyes. I waited for them to shift or blink. They didn’t. I held my leg beside me, ready.
I whispered.
—Navajo?
—Yes.
—Irish.
—Okay.
I must have slept.
There was a thin pillar of light coming from the hole above me where the prop-sticks met and leaned into each other. My Navajo pal was gone but there was someone else there, sitting back on his blanket.
—You shot the poor fuck in the head, said Ford.
—He wasn’t a poor fuck. He was a cop.
The light missed his canvas fedora by inches. He was sitting right beside it.
—Got his just deserts, right?
—Yeah, I said.—Probably.
He watched me strap the leg on.
—We can do that, he said.—We can show him doing some of the bad things that earn him his bullet. That’s doable.
I folded my blanket. I pushed it in under the deerskin wall of the tepee.
—I’ve an oul’ lad’s bladder, I said.—I’ll be back in a minute.
—Your turn to piss on a dead man.
—If I see one.
—Plenty of ’em out there, he said.
I didn’t go far. But Ford was gone when I got back. The day was well on. The sun was up and biting, and the ground looked like the horses had been across and back across it.
—What date is it? I asked a guy who was passing.
I’d seen him before - I remembered - in the little studio desert, carrying a cactus, when they were making Fort Apache.
—Date?
—Yeah, I said.
—Well, he said.—I’m not sure. Say, Duke?
A big guy—
I was big - I suddenly remembered that. I pulled back my shoulders and tried not to let the pain get loud.
This big guy was some kind of an officer. His hat was different, his moustache was well looked after. He’d been made up to look older than he was. The grey in his hair wasn’t real. I wasn’t sure the hair was even real.
—What can I do for you? he said.
He was huge but it looked like he’d been cut in half; a bigger top was balanced on the legs and arse of a smaller man.
—What date is it? asked the cactus guy.
—Ah Jesus, said Duke.—I don’t have to know things like that. That’s someone else’s job.
I watched Duke step over the dog.
—Is that Duke Wayne? I asked.
I remembered the name. Ford had said it, often.
—Sure is, said Cactus.
I watched Wayne go up some steps. There was a swagger but he got up the steps like a lighter, careful man. He’d have done well in a flying column in 1920.
Now I saw someone I did know.
—How’s it going, Gypo?
It was the guy I’d seen in The Informer. Gypo Nolan. He was older and wider, but it was him. He was hung-over, still half-pissed. He stared at me like he was trying to see through deep water.
—Say, Vic, said Cactus.—What’s the date?
—Fuck off now, said Gypo.
He sounded Irish. But he didn’t - he was pretending to be Irish. It was the accent he’d had in The Informer. He kept going, kicking dust, up the same steps Wayne had danced up. But Gypo tried to smash them as he went. He followed Wayne through an open plank door. There was nothing behind it, only more of the desert.
—What’s Gypo’s name? I asked.
—Vic, said Cactus.—Victor McLaglen.
—He’s not Irish.
—No, said Cactus.—But he thinks he is. Pappy told him he was and Vic believed him. He’s English, in actual fact. I think.
I heard the accordion behind me. There was a young-looking skinny lad coming across the dirt and Danny Borzage was walking ahead of him, squeezing out The Streets of Laredo. Ford came through the door to the desert and it was as if the accordion had been shot dead and brought back to very quick life; The Streets of Laredo became Bringing in the Sheaves. Danny went to meet his master coming down the steps. Ford stopped in front of the skinny kid. He pushed the kid’s cap up an inch, looked at it and left it like that. The kid’s forehead was burnt and his red hair matched it.
—Ready? said Ford.
—Yes, Uncle Jack, said the kid.
—Got your lines?
—Yes.
—That’s the idea, said Ford.
The accordion was sucking in and shaping the dust. The red air danced around Ford. The noise, the sudden space in front of the camera, the blast of white light, the concentration on all the wet, dirty faces - they were ready to roll, just waiting for the go-ahead from Ford.
He stopped in front of me.
—It can’t be in the head, he said.
—That was how it was.
—Fuck how it was. It’s a story, not the Gospel according to fucking Luke.
Then he shouted, straight into my face.
—I’ve changed my mind!
But he wasn’t talking to me. The lights went quickly out, and hidden men appeared from behind walls and fences.
—Come on, said Ford.
He was quick on the feet; I hadn’t seen him move like this before. He charged out the front gate of the fort, past my tepee. I couldn’t keep up; my leg didn’t like the broken ground. Danny still played but the song, the rhythm, was breaking up the further Ford strode from the fort. He was on the small hills now, marching over them. I was passed by the crew and stuntmen, the horses and, now, the trucks pulling generators and huge propellers - the wind machines - and men clinging, hanging from the backs and sides of the trucks. I could feel the dirt, between the wood and the meat of my leg, scouring, cutting.
I knew he’d stopped because the music became music again. Dust settled; so did the noise. I could see Ford, over the heads and hats of the men who’d gone in front of me.
I stopped, and I was angry. But I watched. The resolve, whatever it was I’d pulled together, had blown away. Ford had me where he wanted me, in the middle of red nowhere. I didn’t even have an accordion to squeeze and hide behind.
The music stopped.
He didn’t shout, but I heard him.
—Here.
Another voice took the word.
—Here!
Ford turned, a half-circle. He pointed.
—And here.
—Here! Let’s go!
Ford marched off the chosen hill. This time I waited. I didn’t want to move.
—I think Pappy would like a word with you.
Meta Sterne was beside me.
—Are you quite alright? she asked.
She took off her big-brimmed hat, so she could look up at all of me.
—I’ll be grand, I told her.
—The heat?
—Yeah.
Ford stopped at the bottom of the hill. The cactus guy unfolded two canvas chairs and put them side by side, backs to the hill. I saw Ford speak to Danny Borzage, and Danny turned and walked towards me. I saw his fingers, and heard that poxy bit of a song, The Bold Henry Smart.
And now I moved. I met him halfway, keeping an eye on the ground I’d have to cover. I went straight for him, through him; I made him and h
is squeezebox get out of my way.
Ford didn’t turn. But I saw his fury in the stiffness of his shoulders and neck. As I came up behind him I could see his white handkerchief. He was chewing it, sucking it up like a piece of very white spaghetti. I sat beside him. Most of the hankie was in his mouth. A corner of it, a fat rat’s tail, sat on his chin.
Meta Sterne was beside him now and, for a while - a few long seconds - I wasn’t there. It was her and him. Her wide hat brim made shade for both of them as she stood beside him, and slowly pulled the handkerchief from his mouth. It began to dry in the heat; I could see the steam lift from it. She picked up her blanket, flicked it open, and was sitting on it before it had properly settled, just beside Ford’s feet.
—Ready, Meta? he said.
—All set, she answered.
Her hat darkened the paper on her lap. It was like she was putting her hand into a cave to write.
—Lil, I said.
—What?
The name had just dropped in front of me.
—I had a sister called Lil.
I wasn’t really talking to them. I just needed to hear it.
—She in the story? said Ford.
—She was my sister.
I searched for the pebbled notebook. Trousers, jacket - I had more pockets than I’d ever owned. I found it, inside my jacket. The words were there, the names. They were all there. I looked at the last one I’d written. GRACIE. I waited till my hand, my arm, stopped shaking. Then I wrote the new name. LIL.
I tried to see her. I tried to see all of them. But I couldn’t. I could feel them and - I thought I did - I heard them. Their cries and whines. But no more names dropped for me. GRACIE. LIL. Just the two. There’d been others - lots of them. I could make up a number - ten, eleven, seventeen. Any big number would have been right, and useless. I was the only one who’d lived.
I didn’t know that. It only hit me then. Lil and all the crawling brothers and sisters - they’d died because I’d stopped looking at them. I’d taken Victor from the last damp cellar. He’d followed me, less than a year old; he’d pulled at my trousers, all the way. It was just me and Victor then. We’d go back sometimes, and they’d be there, and new ones, on top of my mother, crawling over her, as their weight pushed her slowly into the ooze. I went back one day, and they were gone. They were dead - my mother too. Because I didn’t see them.
I was forty-seven. Lil and Gracie, they were younger; they’d be women in their forties. (But Gracie had died; memory kept telling me that.) They might have been in Dublin, Liverpool or New York, any of the places I’d lived in. In among the Paddies or out on their own. They might have been married, mothers, grandmothers. The boys too; they’d been there as well. I didn’t even know their names. Just the surname, Smart, and nothing else.
Lil and Gracie. Two names; solid, remembered. Two shapes, two wails.
I waited until dark. Then I found a rock, a slab of a thing that looked like it had been put there by the film people. It was still warm from the day that was now dead. I sat back on it; I lay right down. I could feel the cold air sit hard on my chest. I let myself get used to the cold. I shivered my way into it.
I looked up at the stars. There were so many of them - all that death and none of it hidden. Every dead infant and toddler; they were all up there - the starving, milkless, tortured. There were millions of them, more than millions. They looked down at me and waited.
—I’m sorry.
I tried to see them, the brothers and sisters who were waiting for me. But all I could see was stars.
It was still dark when I gave up. But I was stuck to the slab - I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my hands. I couldn’t move my head, or shut my eyes. I had to keep looking. I couldn’t budge. I had no choice.
There was one star. It seemed to grow; it got brighter, yellow - then white. And I knew who it was.
Henry.
The other Henry. The first and the real. He glowed proud and angry. He stared at me. He’d pinned me to the slab. He could have killed me - he was going to. A sudden shaft would slice and burn me up to nothing. I’d be a shadow left on the rock. I tried to stare, tried to match him. But it was hopeless.
He came no nearer. He got no brighter. He waited too. Until I understood: they were behind him. The other stars, our brothers and sisters. They were tucked in there, behind the other Henry. He was hiding them from me, behind the white glare, and he was hiding me from them.
The stars faded. I saw them drowned by dawn light that slowly bleached the sky. The shadow of one of the massive buttes cut its way over me. It grabbed my legs and pulled me to its freezing hold. And, as it took my face and eyes, the dawn glare was gone and I saw the other Henry, still up there, still guarding what was his.
—Gracie!
I could yell again. I could move.
—I only want to see her! Lil!
The shadow raced over me, like a gravel current.
—Gracie!
The stars were gone. The sun was already eating at the long shadows.
He was still up there.
It was night when I woke. He was sitting beside me. He’d brought a canvas chair.
—Susie, I said.
—Susie O’Shea?
—No, I said.—I told you about that. I didn’t know her fuckin’ name.
—Who’s Susie?
—My sister, I told him—One of my sisters.
The name was breaking up, becoming another. But I got it down - there was enough light - below the others. GRACIE,
LIL, SUSIE.
—It’s all coming back, he said.
There was no sneer in the words.
—Tell me about the wedding, he said.
I kept looking at the names on the page. But the light was climbing out the hole at the top of the tepee. I’d woken up with other names around me, but I’d only managed to grab the one. I could feel the others; they were still in the air, breaking.
His foot tapped my knee.
—The wedding, he said.
They’d gone. But I’d caught one of them. A real name, not a hidden star.
—We did that, I said.
—What about the dowry?
—What dowry?
—You should have read the fucking story, said Ford.—There’s always a dowry.
—What’s a dowry?
He leaned out of the chair, and then pulled himself back in. He’d taken a piece of paper from a back pocket. He brought the page right up to his face; he lifted his specs. There was less than an inch between his eyes and the paper.
—Can’t make out Meta’s scrawl here.
He coughed. He read.
—Dowry. Noun. An amount of property or money brought by a bride to her husband on their marriage. Origin. Middle English.
He stopped reading.
—That clear? he said.
—Yeah.
—Great, he said.—Middle English, my ass. It’s an Irish tradition. So, what did she bring?
—Nothing.
—Nothing?
—Just herself.
I could see her now. I could feel her - no, I couldn’t - but I could remember her skin, and her heat and breath. I could put her together. I had my words and pictures. I was there - in the tepee, not in Dublin or Roscommon. And I wanted to stay there, in the fuckin’ tepee. I wanted to put my life together, to tell my story. But I didn’t want to crawl back into it, or even think that I could do that. I wanted to live properly. I wanted to keep going.
He was waiting, looking at me.
—Macushla, I said.
—The tune? John McCormack?
—She liked that one.
—Great, he said.
He hummed it a bit, and stopped.
—It’ll fit, he said.—It’s a song about fucking a corpse, but we can use it.
—Good.
—No dowry?
—No.
—See, we need that tension. The brother won’t hand over the dowry. So she won’t let the
guy fuck her until she gets the dowry. The legs stayed crossed, and these are legs. So he fights the brother. Fights the fucker right across the country. Bam, bam. For twenty minutes. Gets the dowry and throws it in the fire.
He sat up.
—She needs the dowry, he said.—We have to see that fight. We have to see her angry, you know, red-haired and fucking furious.
—She was in the I.R.A., for fuck sake. How much more anger do you want?
—Mary Kate, he said.
—Who?
—I told you. This woman has to have a name.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
—Okay, I said.
—Okay?
I nodded, once. I could give the man the name. That way, the story would stay mine.
—Great, he said.
He was happy. He loved the name; I could see that. He was rolling it around.
—Yeah, he said.—Mary Kate. Two names. Enough for two fine women. That’s what we call them in Ireland, right? Fine women.
I said nothing.
—We’ll still go with the Miss O’Shea thing, he said.—But then he finds out her name is Mary Kate. Right after she becomes Mary Kate Smart and her brother won’t hand over the dowry.
—She didn’t have a brother, I said.
—What did she have? Her dad’s dead - has to be. Who gives her away - at the wedding?
—Her cousin.
—He can be her brother.
—No.
—The man of the house. A big guy. Colludes with the British. Makes sense. We can shoot him in the head.
—Hang on a minute, I said, and I took out the notebook.
I wrote the name. IVAN REYNOLDS. Her cousin. I went back some pages. I found it. MISS O’SHEA. I wrote below it. NOT
MARY KATE.
He nodded at the notebook.
—You’re writing stuff down there.
—Yeah.
—Remember what I said? We got to get it all into two hours, less. We got to take shortcuts.
He held his hand out. He wanted the notebook.
—Go on, he said.—I already ate. I just want to see it.
I let him take it from my hand. He opened it and brought it to his face. He lifted his glasses.
—This is great, he said.
He mumbled. I saw him turning pages.
—Names, he said.—Names. Tell me about Victor.