There are hunting parties, dare raids over the divide, and occasionally kids are captured like Gary Powers, and there’s a whole ta-do. It’s tense, and everyone’s bored with their life and this is bringing on war fever. People grumble, and there’s hysteria mounting in the press. A prime minister of the left continent is debating with his cabinet the consequences of mobilization. They’re at a country house in an island group near the continental divide. The peace party thinks there will be universal slaughter if war breaks out; they’re right, of course. The peace party recalls to memory the events of the last border war. He’s talking and they’re listening, jaws agape. It’s not my story now, it’s Granpa Sam’s, the mudbath shambles of July 1916, shit and skulls. The Ulster Division slaughtered by companies and then by battalions and then by week’s end there is no one left at all. From the picture on the piano Granpa Sam loses forty-five friends, forty-five out of fifty, in the first twenty minutes. The piano and the brown photographs and a sword and a violin. How rigid everyone is, how formal. Were they like that, were they not profane like the rest of us?
And now where have these thoughts come from? Home. War. It’s a universe away. An ocean. But the sheugh is wide. Aren’t we still in the New World? Possibilities.
I leave them there in the mud, poison gas drifting back into their own trenches. I’m back with the farmers of the window continent. Mechanization has not yet hit. Neither has enclosure. There is proper crop rotation and the fields are left fallow in winter and every seventh year. The crops are hardy and adaptable and disease in this kingdom is rare. They have malaria in the swamps, but they have discovered quinine. There’s a light rain, a sun shower; people are tilling soft drumlins and in the background there’s a blue lough. They’re wearing woolen trousers and cotton shirts, flat tweed caps. They have butter and buttermilk and potato bread and veda. Yes, that’s better. For breakfast there is a toasted slice of soda with Dromona and Lyle’s Golden Syrup. And then, bejesus, you’re out in the crisp morning and into the fields. The sun’s out over the lough and it’s a wee bit like County Down. There’s a church and a tractor, and you’re baling hay. I don’t mind being back here. A big ganch with a blue face is driving the tractor and we’re on the ground with forks shoveling it up onto the back of the truck. Sweating and cursing and spinning yarns. It’s lunch and we’re only thirteen, but the oul boy’s wife has brewed us cider and we’re half tore from just the smell of it. Big jam pieces on batch bread with butter and homemade blackcurrant. Yeah, that’ll do. I close my eyes and drift.
Later.
Sitting up. Both boys are sleeping now. Scotchy: a scrawny red beard, hollow eyes, lank, slablike skin. Fergal: bloody fingers from his pick and a wild untrimmed beard like that of an insane man. Hair sticking out everywhere—I think the Indians are frightened of him. Fuck knows how I look. Never had a beard before. Got one now with no mirror to see how it becomes me.
In a wee while, Scotchy will wake and scratch himself, crotch first and then feet and then hair and then the rest of him. He’ll do that for half an hour and talk to himself for a minute or two and then, if he’s got the energy, he’ll talk to me. He’ll pare down his fingernails and scratch himself some more. Fergal will wake and lie still; you won’t be able to tell when he’s conscious or not. He’ll lie there, off in some private place. He’ll speak even less than Scotchy, and if he has his energy he’ll work on his pick. Of course, our hair will start to fall out soon. Scotchy informs us that vitamin C is stored in the body only for about six weeks. After that, it’s scurvy.
I’m thinking logically, trying to get a grip. Blacker thoughts. Things do not stand well. We’ve lost weight and we’re weaker, and I know for a certainty that I’m starting to get bedsores. My nails are brittle and my throat’s cracked and I’m crippled by lethargy. If they would only give us some limes it would make a huge difference.
Mealtime. We eat rice and drink water. I keep waiting for variation, but it’s not coming. Scotchy mumbles something about eating the crickets for protein, but I’m not there yet.
A day or two later, he orders us to do it. It’s a joke to think that Scotchy is in a position to give orders, but he has a point. The crickets are easy to catch, and it’s diverting. You crunch them and pretend they’re potato chips. You crunch them well, otherwise they writhe about on the way down your throat. The mantises, if anything, are worse for that behavior. Fergal refuses to eat the insects, and Scotchy laughs and says that that’s more for the rest of us.
Fergal goes back to his filing, Scotchy to his rage and mumbling. I go back to nothing. Nothing and then thoughts, regrets, fear.
Night.
Morning, we pick the lice out of each other’s hair. My story, the farmers, the war, the movie. Mealtime again. Evening coming so fast, and then the night again. And every night and day it’s louder out there. All the noises of the forest that go on forever, stopping only to pause and tease us, for an hour or two, in the hottest part of the day.
The morning comes, and there are no cockcrows or songbirds, just the end of that nighttime roar and the beginning of the daytime one. Back to my other place. Late summer and the harvest is coming in and the window people are fat and happy and unprepared and the door continent is envious as its people tug and pull at the dry earth.
Light comes in. We know a few of the guards: Squinty, Poxy, Bandit (because of his one arm), Pacino (his scarred face), Chunnel (his big nostrils), FDR (he can barely walk). Except for Squinty, they don’t speak any English or, if they do, they won’t. Squinty only has about five words and it’s pointless asking him anything. We know none of the other prisoners. If there’s a leader, it’s an Indian in jeans and Andy’s shoes. Some of the others seem to defer to him. But really, that’s not important. They don’t give a shit about us; they don’t even see us anymore.
Dreams of food. Cadbury’s chocolate, cream doughnuts, golden glistening fish and chips. Beer, a real pint of Guinness, viscous, bitter, smooth.
And her, always her. Those eyes and that smile. Those long legs that invite you to touch her, to hold her, to take her on the bed, to remove her green skirt and white panties. To feel her breath on yours, to ease yourself inside of her, to screw her and hold her and lick her sweat. And then to lie next to her on the cool sheets.
Sit there, bored, scratch myself, throw Scotchy a cricket, but he doesn’t stir. Sit there.
I pick one fly out of the hundreds and try to follow it. It lands in the slop bucket, takes off, lands on Fergal, takes off again, back to the slop bucket, over to me, lays something on my arm (got to keep still, so it can), and off again. It’s a nice symmetry, Scotchy, Fergal, me—the flies keeping us moored together through a bucket of our own liquid shit.
Eat your crickets, Bruce, harder to catch now, Scotchy says, and throws his back. I grab the fucker and I do eat it, and he smiles at me.
It’s another third day and we get unlocked. The whistle goes, and we walk around the yard, keeping to ourselves, frightened. No one speaks to us; we stay away from everyone else. For a minute, I stare angrily at the man wearing my sandals and then I catch myself at it and stop. The whistle blows, and we take our bucket and our straw and go back in.
Guards come and produce padlocks from a bag. Lock us down. Close the door.
I sit there wondering if the others will bother to speak. Fergal’s agitated and he does:
Boys, listen, wee old bloke with the limp was giving me the eye. Think I might be on ta something. He’s got information for us, I can tell, maybe about Big Bob, Fergal says, excitedly.
Maybe he wanted your arse, I suggest, slowly.
Scotchy grins at me.
No, no, he knows something, Fergal persists. Doesn’t trust you two, but he does me.
Aye, maybe he’s the head boy on the fucking escape committee, wants your help with the glider they’re making in block C, Scotchy says, with heavy sarcasm.
I wink at him.
No reason to get all eggy, Fergal says.
All t
he reason in the world, I think, Scotchy retorts.
Fergal grunts and goes back to the belt buckle.
Scotchy nods at me and I nod back. I try to think of something funny that will cheer us up, but I can’t. My brain is slow and won’t move.
I lie back and pick things out of my beard. I huddle down into the straw. Food comes, and we gobble it down. Dark, and we get afeared, but the noise at least keeps us company.
Another day and another. The weather breaks, and one day it rains and the whole floor oozes with damp, as if things weren’t bad enough. Scotchy develops a cough and his hacking keeps us awake at all hours. Fergal and I are probably thinking the same thing: that he’s going to be next. In the morning, we’re expecting him to be coughing blood, but he isn’t, and he actually looks a little better. He saves his voice, and when night comes he’s coughing less.
Gave us a scare there, mate, I whisper in the dark. Thought you were getting cholera or, more likely, AIDS or the clap or something.
Scotchy doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him smiling. I go back to sleep. Night, bad dreams. Another day of the same shite. Scotchy recovers from his cough, and we don’t get anything worse than we have. We are getting weaker, though, malnutrition and diarrhea, and I know that this cannot go on indefinitely.
But what else can we do but conserve our strength and hope for better times? Micawberism, but my brain is too addled for anything else.
On one day I decide that it’s my birthday. I don’t tell the others. I just sit there with the knowledge that my teenage years are done. And it’s that night that I go back, way back to where it all began.
Does the memory work like a journal or a logbook? Can you record words and faces and read them back years from now? Most professionals say no. You either use it or lose it. The mind isn’t a video camera or a computer or a big book. Oh aye? Well, how do you account for the smells and the details and the dialogue?
It’s all there.
Really.
And big brother, where are you? And Ma and Da, are you still in this world? You exist somewhere, even if only for a time in that place of dreams. Oh, I see it all.
My eyes close. It’s set. All those moments, together in one moment. Future, present, past.
And it comes back. PJ hiding. Davey Quinn. Mrs. Miller. The hair falling in tiny helicopter blades.
All those moments, together in one. Weird that many of them come together around the solstice, Saturnalia, Nativity, the mass of Christ; no, not weird, it’s a hard time. The Christmas of last year at the Europa, the Christmas of long ago in the lean, black tenement streets, the Christmas yet to be …
The rain ghostwriting itself on the windowsill. The smell of turf from the kitchen grate. Belfast there, in winter memory, oozed up from the mudflats of the lough.
PJ under the shed. Hiding. Toys with him. What toys? Fluorescent patches on soldiers moving about in the darkness. He’s playing antipersonnel mines and hurling the plastic bodies away from imaginary explosions. He’s three years older, but I’m more mature, preferring Lego to Action Men, which (oh, yes) is a moot point because I’ve lost all my Action Men to him on a bet as to whether I can make an effective parachute out of bedsheets that would take me without injury from the washhouse roof to the back garden….
Yes, I remember.
I want to hide too, and I think about either running away up into the fields or sneaking under the bunk in our bedroom, but that would mean going upstairs, which is out of the question since Granpa is wandering around up there in his pajamas, looking for his teeth and muttering things about the pope, the prime minister, and sometimes the kaiser.
Granpa.
I can run over to Davey’s house and try and wangle an extra dinner from his parents. They would hide me all evening if they could. They like me better than Davey himself because, despite being a Protestant, I always say “please” and “thank you” and call Shirley “Mrs. Quinn,” even though all of us know she isn’t really married to Davey’s da.
I’m mulling over the possibilities in front of the Flintstones on TV when the living room door opens.
Ma comes in with a pound note. She’s so pretty, young.
Here, she says.
What’s that for? I ask, affecting an unconvincing air of ignorance.
You know full well. Now get your brother.
I don’t know where he is, I attempt.
You don’t?
No.
Not even if there was ten pence in it for you?
You want me to squeal on PJ for a miserly ten p.?
Take it or leave it.
The coin sitting in her hand. Heads up. It’s one of those that has been defaced by the Provos. A big cross over the face of the queen.
Sometimes they don’t take those vandalized ones in the sweetie shop.
Ma looks at the ten pence and shrugs. She reaches in the pocket of her slacks. Blue ones, the ones with the permanent jam stain on the buttocks.
She brings out a Free State ten p. with a fish as the head side and a harp as the tails.
He’s under the hut, I say, taking my piece of silver and putting it in my shorts.
She opens the window.
PJ, get in here. I can see you.
He does not come.
PJ, you’re under the shed. I can see you from here.
A minute later he appears in the living room, shooting me a dirty look.
You grassed me up, ya bastard, he whispers as Ma goes to get him a new T-shirt to wear.
I never did.
Oh, you liar.
Are you calling me a liar?
Yes.
I’ll kick your bake in.
Like to see you try.
Like to see you stop me.
Like to see you try to stop me.
Oh, I’ll try.
Try is right.
Try and succeed.
Aye, you will?
Think I won’t?
Uh-huh.
Well, we’ll see, so we will.
Aye, we will?
Aye, we will.
I shoot him a confused expression.
What were we talking about again? I ask.
He grins at me and we both crack up laughing.
Wee bugger, he whispers to me as Ma comes back with a yellow T-shirt.
Put this on, she says. I can’t believe you were crawling under the shed with all those worms and things. Son, I tell you, I think your head’s cut sometimes. Good job your da’s not here.
Aye, when’s he ever? PJ whispers. I don’t answer, and we walk outside into the road.
Is there any way out of this at all? he asks me.
Not if you want any presents this year, I say.
We walk sullenly along the street. It’s dusk and there are a lot of kids out playing kerby and tag and football. For a December night, the weather isn’t bad. A group of girls playing hopscotch and jumping with a big rope. A mild evening and everyone excited about tomorrow.
A big tawny hound sitting right in the middle of the road, cars driving around it and honking at it, the dog paying no attention to them or to anything.
Mr. McClusky is trying to get his pigeons to fly into the coop, but they’re way up on the telephone wires.
Come down, you wee fucks, he’s saying to them over and over. Sooner or later his wife will come and reprimand him for his language in front of the kids. The pigeons will go into the coop anyway as soon as it gets cold.
Davey sees me farther up the road.
Hey, Mikey, what’s the craic? he shouts.
Nothing.
You wanna do nets?
I shake my head.
Can’t, I shout back.
What did you call me? he jokes.
We walk on, and a few doors down come to the house with a big hole in the fence. All the houses on the terrace are identical. They’re all redbricked and joined to one another in rows of six or seven. To get to the back garden, you have to go through the house itself or through a
narrow entryway that two houses share. The only thing that distinguishes one house from another is how the gardens are kept. Some people grow flowers, others vegetables, some people have it all grass, and others—for some reason that neither PJ nor I understands—have the whole garden concreted over.
The Millers have gone for the uncared-for look. Their garden has three-foot-high grass and weird mechanical objects lurking in the undergrowth. We know they have a dog because of the amount of dog shite everywhere. The animal itself we have never seen. PJ speculates that it got lost in the grass and never made it back home and was now surviving on crickets and bits of postmen.
Or bits of little boys.
The only obvious concession to the season is a handwritten sticker in the window that says Double Milk Christmas Eve. Christmas they have spelled with no “h.”
We walk up the cracked path and bang on the knocker. At first no answer, and then a lot of swearing from the living room. We shrink back a little as footsteps come closer to the door.
It opens and Mr. Miller looks at us, very confused and angry for a second.
The bloody carols, is it? he says. Why aren’t you singing, ya wee fucks?
Er, it’s not, er …
If you think I’m going to give you a bloody penny without youse even opening your bakes to sing, you’ve another thing coming. Jesus, today youse weans want everything on a plate. That’s what’s the trouble. Fenians have the right idea. You always see them on the TV, working away, singing and doing that Irish dancing. They’re outbreeding us, so they are. Look at the Quinns down the road. They have ten weans, so they do, and she’s still up for more. You’d think they’d come to the door and not sing? Not that I’d give them anything. Bucket of water, maybe. Heh-heh…
Dead I Well May Be Page 15