Getting it in the Head

by Mike McCormack

  I was up early the next day before school making a start on those matches. I had done two more cartons after tea the evening before and now the whole day was ahead of me for the last four. The pea can was about three quarters full. I was sure we would have more than enough. I spent an hour before school and three hours in the evening and then suddenly they were done. As if on cue Jamie walked in with his sulphur, a whole tin plus a handful in a plastic bag. We had nearly three tins full. I took the pipe down from the shelf and unscrewed one end and began packing in the sulphur till it was half full. Threading the fuse through the holes and knotting it was a cinch. I packed in the rest of the sulphur over it and screwed back the stop end. At long last it was ready. It was heavy and really solid. With the twine coming out of it, it looked like something you swing around your head when charging into battle. I handed it to Jamie.

  ‘Our suspect device. Let’s check now and make sure we have everything ready. We need to be organized tonight when the time comes.’

  We laid out everything we needed, the bomb still connected to the ball of twine, a roll of insulating tape, a small can of petrol, a box of matches and a penknife. We racked our brains for a minute and then reckoned we had all the angles covered. I packed the lot into a bag and put it back on the shelf. We were ready.

  ‘What time will you call at?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘About two o’clock. The pubs will be closed and the town will be quiet. And for God’s sake don’t sleep too deep, I don’t want to be waking the whole town hammering on your window.’

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight, too excited.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be set up for the summer. It’ll be all ahead of us and we’ll be rotten with money.’

  ‘That’s if you’re awake.’

  ‘I’ll be awake, don’t worry.’

  I lay with my eyes open wide after twelve o’clock that night. I didn’t need to force them wide, I was too nervous to go to sleep but I thought I’d better be safe than sorry. I kept urging the time to hurry up and get to two o’clock because I was all jumpy. It felt like those times when I was a kid at Christmas and believed in Santa Claus, lying awake and not being able to sleep and the time taking forever to pass into morning. But I don’t believe in Santa any more, I just pretend to – it’s more profitable.

  At last I saw on my watch that it was coming round to two o’clock. Another twenty minutes. I used my flashlight to dress in the dark and I was just about to lace up my boots when I heard the front door slam. Damn, I was hoping I would have got the job done and been back before my brother came home. Usually he didn’t turn up until five or six in the morning. Now I would have to wait until he fell asleep. I strained my ears to hear him moving around the kitchen. I heard the radio come on and the kettle being filled and then all was quiet. I cursed him darkly. I couldn’t leave while he was in the kitchen; I had to use the backdoor into the yard. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was down there doing this on purpose, smoking and grinning, knowing well that I had to pass through the kitchen.

  It was two o’clock now and I was thinking of Jamie. He had probably fallen into one of those comas of his and I would never wake him. Would I continue on my own and do the job without him? I didn’t think so. Explosions, especially one like this, needed witnesses, people who could talk about it among themselves when it was over. Just then the door opened and my brother came in. He was going to bed after all, and he was too lazy even to turn on the light. He bumped off the end of my bed with a curse and then I heard his leather jacket hitting the floor and his boots and the buckle of his belt. The bed creaked as he got into it and then the room flared up in a weak orange light – the fucker was going to smoke one last fag before he went to sleep. I could hear his breath wheezing in his chest as he inhaled. He’d had asthma since he was a child, one of the reasons he was so pale. Smoking as much as he did didn’t help either. He finished the fag and stubbed it out eventually. It was now twenty past two and I would need another half hour to make sure he was asleep. I was curled up tight, fully clothed under the bedclothes, looking at the watch face like it was the only other thing in the universe. My ears were straining to hear him breathing in the opposite bed. Eventually he started making that piggish breathing noise that told me he had dropped off; it was a quarter to three. I rose out of the bed and took my boots in my hands; I would put them on in the kitchen. From the kitchen to the shed to Jamie’s window it couldn’t have taken me more than a minute. Jamie poked his head from behind the curtain. He was fully awake and dressed.

  ‘What the hell kept you?’ I could tell he was anxious.

  ‘I got held up – that stupid brother. Are you ready?’ I held up the bag. ‘Let’s go.’

  In another five minutes we had made our way to the river and were running up the back way to the pub. I could see the town street lighting through the blown-out windows and a big moon hanging over the town like a white plate. We would have plenty of light. We drew up panting before the door of the shed. In the blue light it looked a lot heavier than I had remembered. It was made of heavy, brown teak and was locked in the middle with a single bolt and padlock. I began to have doubts about the bomb. Maybe I should have made it bigger, used more sulphur. Jamie didn’t seem to have any doubts though. Already he was holding the copper pipe to the door, checking it for size. He had the masking tape out too.

  ‘Below the lock,’ I instructed. ‘We want to be sure we get the bolt off.’ He began prising out the tape with his teeth but I halted him. ‘Hold on till we soak the fuse first. Hold the pipe to the door till I run it out.’

  I ran with the ball of twine to the sod ditch about twenty-five yards away, cut it and gathered it back to Jamie. He had the can of petrol open. I dropped the whole of the twine into the can and shook it up, careful not to get the opening into the sulphur wet. It was just another minute’s work to tape the pipe to the door and run the wet fuse behind the ditch. We hunkered down. The box of matches lay on the ground between us.

  ‘Who’ll light it?’ I could see the whites of his eyes like cold marble. He was blowing in his hands like he was cold, but he couldn’t be, this was early summer.

  ‘I’ll light it, it was my idea.’ I was sure of myself again and Jamie didn’t seem to mind. In fact he looked pleased, I had a feeling his nerve might be failing him. I lit the end of the fuse and watched it take off. For the first time in the whole plan I thought about what would happen when the explosion went off. Were we going to walk into the store, and walk out with those crates of bottles under our arms? I didn’t think so. It dawned on me for the first time also that the explosion was going to wake the whole town. I knew we would have to make a run for it. That made me grin. I knew that this was what we had both secretly decided to do once the bomb went off – run like hell. All that guff about selling those bottles and making a fortune had only been an excuse. All we were ever really interested in was making a big bang.

  I watched the blue flame make its way steadily along the fuse. It moved like a dream, steadily and not too fast. Lying so near the ground it looked like a tiny ghost. I don’t think I could have stopped it now even if I had run forward and thrown myself on it. It would have just shrugged me off and kept going with a life of its own. It was now about two yards from the pipe and I held my breath as it disappeared over the final length and into the darkness of the pipe. I was going to suffocate if it did not go off then. For one hollow moment, when it felt like some heavy weight was plummeting in my belly, I was sure it wasn’t going to happen. Then, with a dull yellow flash and a roar of things coming apart, the door heaved backwards into the lit-up shed and the concrete over the door showered upwards with the asbestos sheeting. Jamie let out a great cry and jumped back in exultation. I was going to start one of my war dances but all of a sudden this rubbish – timber, stone and asbestos chunks – came falling out of the sky all over me. I had to bend over with my arms over my head for protection. I don’t think I’ve ever had a happier moment than that one, bent ove
r and laughing like an idiot with all that debris falling onto me. When I eventually looked up at the shed I felt a real deep swelling in my chest. You didn’t need to know much about explosives to know that a pretty impressive one had just gone off in the vicinity. The door was lying in pieces all over the inside and most of the asbestos roof was all over the garden. But what really impressed was that on the side of the door where the bomb had been taped, the whole front wall had been blown out and you had a clear view right into the centre of the shed. I was never so proud of my abilities. It had worked beyond my wildest dreams and I knew I would do it all again.

  I seemed to be on my own. Already I could see the lights come on in the backs of houses along the street. I turned to run but straight away I tripped over Jamie who was lying on the ground. I came up with my face beside his, straightening my glasses, and I nearly got sick with fright. Jamie’s breath was coming in short jerks and he looked like he’d just walked out of a slash and hack movie. Jutting from his left eye was the bolt of the door. He was still alive, barely. I could hear a whimpering sound and another thick, gurgling one coming from his throat. I had to concentrate my whole mind to keep from reaching out and shaking him even though I knew that no amount of shaking was going to rid him of that bolt in his head. I was going to shit myself with fright if I stayed there much longer, I could feel my arse beginning to twitch. I got up to run and I could hear myself crying. My legs didn’t seem to want to carry me. They seemed to be going in two directions at once. But after what seemed like an age I was running in the back door and up the stairs to my room. I was going to get my brother.

  IV

  What I really want to talk about is Owl because in every way Owl is the beginning, middle and end of my world. That’ll bring me to this trouble I’m in and maybe through talking it through I’ll be able to make some sense of the whole thing.

  The day after the fire I went to have a look at the pub. I was amazed at how the blackened shell looked like all those other gutted buildings I had seen in newsreel footage of bombings from all over the world: Dresden, Coventry, Hiroshima, Beirut, Belfast. This charred and blasted pub could have belonged to any of those cities of ruin and disaster. I half expected to see fire wardens in Home Guard uniform walking among the rubble organizing a clean-up and carting away the maimed and the dead. But it was more low-key than that, just a few detectives and a couple of plain-clothes pigs walking around looking for clues. They stopped to ask me had I nothing better to do than hang around and when I pretended not to hear them they told me to fuck off. Before I fucked off I caught a glimpse of Owl prowling through the building, walking over the charred timber and broken glass with the sure-footedness of a rat, the confidence of one who had finally come into his inheritance. It must have been during these moments that he got the idea for that explosion. If ever I saw a kid in his element it was Owl right then. He had that big grin on his face, like someone who has returned after a long journey and recognizes everything about him. He wasn’t doing anything, just walking and grinning, keeping out of the cops’ way, almost serenely contented.

  I watched Owl over the following days and there was definitely something on his mind, he seemed preoccupied with some mysterious project. When I came in at night his bedclothes were no longer up in a heap with him reading beneath. In fact for those few days he never mentioned his books at all, he just became sunk down in thought behind those glasses of his which seemed to grow bigger and bigger, making him look more and more like a bird of prey. When I got him alone I tried to pry it from him.

  ‘You’re thinking those heavy thoughts again, Owl. Share them out to me. I might learn something.’

  ‘I doubt it. If brains were dynamite you wouldn’t have enough to blow your nose.’

  ‘That’s right, I’m not as smart as our little genius.’

  ‘You said that, not me.’

  And that was as far as I got.

  Monday night I was proved right. I couldn’t have been sleeping more than one hour when he burst into the room and started waking me, pulling my quilt and yelling at me to get up. I mumbled something incoherent and tried to curl up tighter on the bed which by now had no clothes. He just kept on shaking me and yelling at me, his voice rising higher and higher and then pulling my hair harder and harder until I could take no more of it. I rose from the bed, my arm uncoiling from beneath me and I caught him clean on the mouth with the back of my hand. It drove him a few feet across the room and put him sitting on his bed. I didn’t mean to do it, it was just another of those thoughtless moments. I just stood there shivering, in more shock than he was. He at least had the sense to straighten up his glasses and keep on yelling at me like nothing had happened. I hadn’t a clue what he was yelling about; my mind was totally taken up with how I had risen up like some animal, hitting and screaming. Mom came into the room then and seeing Owl’s bloody nose went to him with a shriek. Soon everyone was shrieking.

  ‘He hit the child, I swear to God he hit the child.’

  ‘He was pulling the fucking head off me, I had to hit him.’ I was nearly in tears.

  ‘Listen to me, listen to me,’ Owl was yelling. He was trying to break out of Mom’s embrace, doing some complicated swimming stroke to get out of her arms. When he eventually did his voice climbed over our shrieks.

  ‘Listen to me!’

  He had summoned up all his strength to get our attention and I willingly gave it. For the first and only time in my life I was grateful to him for something. I wanted nothing more than to forget how I had hit him and most especially how I had enjoyed it. It had thrilled and horrified me at the same time, my whole body tingled with pleasure and now that I had started I wanted to continue on battering him. But I didn’t want to think like that, that was madness. Instead I focused my mind on how, for that small moment, I was grateful to him for not making a big deal. That seems important now, that moment of near decency rescued from a relationship that did nothing but make both our worlds darker and uglier places.

  It took me a few seconds to focus on what he was saying; some sort of cloud was having difficulty rising from my brain. But when it did and my head was clear I couldn’t believe what he was saying. So this was his mysterious project, rigging up an explosion which had gone off and killed his best friend. I began pulling on my clothes straight away and, amazingly, issuing instructions. I told Mom to stay there and wake Dad and then I pushed Owl ahead of me out the back door. I followed him through the gardens and over fences till we came up the back way of the pub from the river. We were beaten to it by a small crowd. The local doctor was bending over Jamie in the light of two torches held by the cops. I could see straight away that Jamie really was dead – he was lying on his back with the door bolt jutting from his eye. I could feel myself wanting to heave. My legs weakened and I had to clench my belly to fight down the nausea. One of the cops swung his torch on us.

  ‘What are you two doing here?’

  ‘We heard a bang, we came to see what happened. Who is it?’ I was taking the first step towards covering for Owl. I moved closer to him. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Jamie Harkin, the poor child, dead to the world. God help his parents.’ The doctor had now draped the corpse with a white sheet. The cop continued looking at us.

  ‘He was a friend of yours, Owl. Do you know anything about this?’

  He was shining the torch full into Owl’s face, lighting up his gold hair and big specs. Owl was just staring blankly, he didn’t look like he was going to speak. I wondered if for once in his life he was stuck for words. I did something really weird then: I put my arm around him in a gesture of brotherly comfort. I wondered, did Owl notice what I did? I doubt it. Warm human things were not the sort of things which captured his imagination. It was the only time, other than the wallop I’d given him, that I could ever remember touching him. I was amazed to feel that he was skin and bone like any kid his age, like myself in fact. That shocked me. I had always thought that there was something less than human about Owl, somet
hing synthetic. I had expected to feel some sort of atrocity, a cyborg perhaps, partly flesh and bone and partly synthetic skin stretched over a structure of aluminium rod and plate powered by some internal source. If this had been the case I might have been able to accept Owl, maybe even understand him. Instead I felt a deep revulsion at finding him so ordinary and, what was worse, finding him so like myself. I removed my hand from him as if it had been burned.

  ‘Owl’s been at home all evening. We just heard a bang in bed and came here to see. Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘No, we’re just waiting for the ambulance. You’d better go home.’

  I walked ahead of Owl keeping a distance between us. I wanted to be as far away from him as quickly as possible.

  Mom and Dad were waiting for us in the kitchen when we entered. Dad was up now, in his feet, just wearing trousers, his hair sticking out all over the place. Mom sat on the chair, fiddling distractedly with the hem of her cardigan. Both were looking at me for the story. I started to make tea instead, holding onto it on purpose. They’d know all about it soon enough. Mom put her arms around Owl, cuddling him up close and patting his hair down, whispering to him. That little gesture reminded me of a story Owl had told me once, one of those stories he’d got from God knows where. It was about this Brazilian girl whose belly began to swell up like she was pregnant. But she was very young, thirteen or something, and protested she was a virgin. X-rays showed that she was not carrying a child but that she was definitely carrying something. When she went under the knife a six-foot snake, albinoid but in perfect health, was removed from her stomach. Seemingly she had eaten something contaminated by fertilized snake eggs. The only difference I could see at that moment between Owl and that snake was that because of the benign environment of the girl’s womb the snake, unlike Owl, had never developed a venom.