Dead I Well May Be

by Adrian McKinty

  I did object and explained that I had got myself into this mess and would get myself out of it without having to rely on the well-meaning charity of strangers.

  Flinn was not to be daunted and explained that this money was only to be a loan and I would pay him back. Surely it was foolishness not to accept a loan from a friend and wasn’t that what I was going to do in Brooklyn anyway? Since he put it that way, it was hard for me to refuse, so I took his name and address and I did pay the bugger back about a month or so later, when, incredibly, I was on Ramón’s payroll, wearing a thousand-dollar suit and carrying a bloody Uzi.

  He gave me two hundred-dollar bills and left me with handshakes at the bus station in Las Vegas. I bought a ticket to New York and stayed on all the way to Denver, where I had to get out and stretch and get my wits together after a very long and unpleasant over-air-conditioned journey through Utah and the Rockies.

  I found a motel, got a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, stripped, and had a shower that lasted about an hour and a half. I watched TV like it was a new invention. A presidential campaign had been taking place all the time I’d been away and it was getting close to its climax. The governor of Arkansas was being tipped to edge out President Bush. It was boring, so instead I watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and flipped between endless daytime soaps.

  I stayed in the motel for two nights. I spent all my money and cashed in my Greyhound ticket and ordered pizzas and drank beer. I rebandaged my foot and stood, agape, staring at my stump for a while, though fortunately I was pissed senseless at the time, otherwise I might have had a bit of a header. In any case, like I say, in two days I’d spent all my hard-earned cash. It was an idiotic and silly waste of resources, considering how Nyx’s weans had escaped me from the prison and the jungle and given me dough.

  But that was it, of course. I wanted to get back, I wanted to see blood on walls and pooling under the bodies of gray men. I wanted to see widows’ tears. To hear screams and pleas for mercy. But I didn’t want to go back for precisely the same reasons.

  I tried finding Hibernians organizations in Denver, but there was only one in the phone book. I called up and explained my case, but the guy practically laughed when I said I’d like to borrow some money. After that, I packed my shit and walked down Broadway and tried hitching at the on-ramp to the I-70. No one gave me a lift and coppers waved me off and had no time to listen to the adventures of Seamus McBride. I slept rough that night under a bridge near Cherry Creek. I drank the creek water and washed in it before I started hitching again. I went back up to the I-70 ramp and this time I again got lucky.

  An hour later, a man in a camper van was pulling up to the on-ramp and saw me and our eyes locked for a second and he jerked his thumb back for me to get in.

  It was a huge white-and-yellow Winnebago of the very latest fashion. I climbed up. The man was in his fifties, white hair, the sunken gray face of an actuary or undertaker. He told me his name was Peter Jenning, though not like the anchor, he said, because of the s (but I had never heard of the anchor and immediately, from all this nautical terminology, assumed that he was ex-navy).

  I spun him Seamus’s sad story and he swallowed it, and I asked him about life on the ocean wave.

  Well, Seamus, I was never in the armed services. Ear problems. But my son was in the Gulf War, not in the actual fighting, but he was a radar operator behind the lines. Reservist, got his medal, and don’t think it wasn’t dangerous, because it was.

  I believe it. They kept firing those things. Those missiles, I said.

  Scuds, he said, seething with the memory of it.

  Yeah, very risky. I was in the British Army myself then, actually, but I wasn’t sent to the Gulf. Pity, really, I told him. Not mentioning, as I’ve already said, that at that time I was finishing out a minor prison sentence on Saint Helena, and that in itself was a class-A double fuckup too, because after I got back, my regiment was merged with another regiment and a lot of the new recruits were offered semigenerous packages to get out of the army, though not, of course, the fucking dishonorable dischargees.

  You seem upset about it, he said.

  I nodded absently.

  But, son, that war screwed up. Listen to me. The ground war. Gulf War was all based on the Battle of Cannae, you know, flanking maneuver. Cannae was a big victory and so was the ground war, but did Hannibal win the war? Did we beat Saddam? No, we did not. Let me tell you: Vinse Hannibal, et non seppe, um, usar uh, poi. Ben la vittoriosa sua ventura. Read that, memorized it.

  I nodded sagely and said, Ah yes, good point, excellent point. He smiled at me, clearly well pleased with himself.

  You must have learned Latin in school in Ireland, huh, Seamus? Jesuits, right, thumped it into you, he suggested in a leer that seemed to convey his distaste for popery but approval of the beating.

  We did, but, you know, I was never very g—

  Hannibal was victorious and knew not how to use victory given him. That’s what that means. See my point? Bush and Powell, none of them used the victory to boot Saddam out of the country. Hannibal didn’t march on Rome, see what I’m saying?

  I had no idea what he was saying, actually, but there are certain very strict duties imposed on a hitchhiker and one of those is to agree with whatever the driver says. I agreed and he proceeded to break down other errors in the president’s strategy.

  They’re going to have to go in again, you mark my words, son. You remember Cato?

  Yeah, he was always attacking Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther mov—

  Carthago delenda est, that’s what Cato proclaimed, Cathage must be destroyed. You’ll see, we’ll go after Iraq again, Mr. Jenning said, and he outlined how we would win the war and further explained how every engagement in every war since 1860 could have been prosecuted more successfully. It didn’t come as much of a surprise when Mr. Jenning told me that he was a bit of a history buff. He had been in sales for forty years and that wasn’t a shock either, considering that he could talk the arse off an octopus. He had ended up, before retirement, as a regional marketing VP with the Kentucky Fried people. I had assumed that all the restaurants were franchises and wondered what they needed a regional marketing VP for, but Mr. Jenning had laughed at my naive appreciation of the ways of the world and further explained his role in the great corporate machine with endless and excruciating detail.

  It was, however, my luck that Mr. Jenning was driving all the way to Vermont to see the fall colors, and he said he would swing by New York City and leave me off if I wanted. I did so want, and a few days listening to his yammering seemed a small price to pay. He explained Livy, Clausewitz, and Bismarck and, given encouragement, expanded further upon his theories of the universe. He was a widower but didn’t seem to miss his wife that much, and once in his sleep in the big bunk of the Winnebago he said, Serves you right, you old hag, which elicited a few theories of my own.

  He asked a couple of times if I could pay for the gas but I emptied out my pockets and I suppose it convinced him. He didn’t let me do any of the driving, but I entertained him with made-up stories of Ireland. He especially enjoyed salty tales that involved women of loose virtue, and I had a few of those that weren’t so far from the truth.

  When we arrived at the George Washington Bridge, it was raining and cold and night. I thanked him much and he let me off and headed up the Palisades to cross the Hudson at some other point.

  I walked over the GWB in the drizzly dark. There’s no toll for pedestrians, thank Christ, for I had only a dollar and fifty-seven cents that I had husbanded carefully, and with that I took the A train to 125th Street. I came out in familiar old Harlem again. It was two A.M. and sleeting and such people as there were around gave me the cold shoulder. I walked with my crutch along 125th and turned up the hill on Amsterdam.

  I found our building. The front door had been conveniently jemmied again. I walked down into the basement and rang Ratko’s bell. I rang for a long time and eventually there was much swearing in Serbo-Cro
at and he opened the door holding a lead pipe.

  I need a place for a couple of days, I said. Ratko looked at me in astonishment for a second and then helped me through the door.

  The basement stair was steep.

  Each step down was agonizing but I enjoyed the pain. I had made it, I had fucking made it, and every torture now I engraved in memory, another torment notarized and ultimately to be paid for soon in the currency of fear.

  9: THE CORNER OF MALCOLM X AND MARTIN LUTHER KING

  T

  hose first few days back, it was as if I were an astronaut exploring a city on the planet Mars. The people were not human. They were alien creatures sniffing the cold air and muttering and, in sinister fashion, disappearing down into the earth beneath me to catch clattering, spark-spewing electric cars. Shopping, talking, hauling little versions of themselves to school. I watched from shadows, hoping they wouldn’t see that I was a stranger, a being from another world. And I was afraid at any moment that one of them would cry out the usual words: Uitlander, Teague, Jude, Leper. Or no, it would be something that they would understand and I would not, for now even their language puzzled me. Their manner, not hostility exactly, but indifference. The people moving with their long arms and their straight backs, and fast, since for them the outside was merely a place between work and home. These weren’t all the populace, of course. There were others who lived there in the parks and streets; you could see them all the way from Mount Morris to Morningside and Riverside, shuffling, aware of me, hiding too, rag people. We would pass and exchange signs in secret; they could see that I also was adrift, apart. We conspired in silence and walked between greens and churches from 125th Street all the way up to the Cathedral of Saint John. Most of the time, I kept it together and I walked, came back to Ratko’s, ate and slept.

  But some days it was all too much and I expected horrors. I heard weird noises and lights and the trees would be alive; or I’d catch a panorama of wounded birds and jungle animals, or I’d see monsters in parade coming in from Queens and with them giants and the undead and marching bands, elephants, painted floats, and children dressed as rats and crocodiles. Me alone cognizant. Only I could bear witness. Only I was attuned. The other citizens of Harlem were blissfully ignorant of all this noisy caravan coming over the Triborough Bridge. They couldn’t see it, but then they couldn’t see anything. They were blind, perpetually blind, dazed, like survivors of a great ship intercepted unexpectedly by the shore.

  One morning when the sun was out, I took the Queens-bound A train to look at the Atlantic Ocean. Rockaway was cold and the journey by crutch from the subway stop to the beach took me forever. The water was gray and incredible, tangled, bristling. Whitecaps and a howling wind. The sand freezing on my arse. There were half a dozen surfers making attempts on the slow breakers. I watched them for an hour, watched them wait in their black suits for the perfect wave and take it, cutting and gliding and falling in. Maybe I could have done that once, but not now. Fury. I walked farther up the shore where the sea was empty. I sat there and looked and begged the Atlantic to uncover itself. I waited for revelation, for meaning. But the ocean doesn’t give you anything, it doesn’t contribute, it’s a repository, a mirror of yourself, and when I looked I had no reflection at all. I decided to take the train back to Harlem, having learned nothing.

  The A train is the airport train and at JFK dozens of people got on, bringing color and difference to the subway car. For them it was the end of a journey; they were tired and relieved. Their talk was excited and loud. It marked them out. And as they got more animated I got less so and dissolved into the plastic of my seat. They were too much, these Homo sapiens, these people. So close, how can they stand to be so bloody close?

  The train disgorged them at midtown and by 125th they were all long gone. I was relieved; I’d felt I was having an attack.

  It was my stop, so I got up and walked the platform to the exit. Through the turnstile. That walk again, up the subway steps and past the Nation of Islam men in shirts and bow ties. Light rain now, the black Israelites in front of the Record Republic. Normally, they’d yell at the white devil, but there was something about my look. They chose not to see me.

  Here’s a white man who is going to kill other white men. Yes.

  Up the hill. Empty plastic five-dollar crack bags littered everywhere. Men and women gathered around the fake grocery store. The 99 Cents Store. The lamp store. Children wrapped in bear jackets playing with a basketball. PS 125, armor-plated against riot and revolution.

  123rd. The street still the same. Danny the Drunk, predictable and living yet. Vinny, drunk with him, both of them sitting on the stoop and leering at the black Catholic schoolgirls. I stood there and looked out at the great city and breathed the autumn air. I was starting to get back my strength for the task in hand. My body had to be strong, but my mind, at least, was already there. I know there are people who triumph over the need for vengeance, who say that loving your enemies hurts them more; that breaking the cycle of violence is the way to happiness. But this was not about being spiritually advanced. This was not about being happy. No.

  I spat. The door was broken. I pushed it in and went down.

  Ratko’s wife was big and white and stuffed food down our mouths to shut us up. She didn’t speak any English and was suspicious of what Ratko was telling me. Perhaps he was talking about her, or about a mistress he had in the building next door, or about plans to tip off the INS about her status. One way to get rid of her, send her back to war-torn Yugoslavia.

  She fed us sausage so undercooked and bloody that I was sure it was a chastisement. Ratko ate it heartily, though, so it might just have been some Serbian thing. More familiar were overboiled potatoes and slow-baked kidney pies. For pudding she constructed on different days bread puddings and sponges and slab-thick chocolate cake that weakened you and made you drunk before you’d finished it. Ratko fed me vodka and all the time he hinted that tonight would have to be my last and that really, all things considered, I couldn’t stay here. I slept in the box room, for the spare room had become the dog’s and the dog bullied the family and began howling when I first broached the possibility of sharing space with it. Generally, I have a good relationship with dogs, but your mind needs to be clear and relaxed for it to work, so I let it have the room. The box room was tiny and airless and I slept so well there it was like I was some advanced Zen master in his monastery cell.

  When we first talked, Ratko had some good news, some bad news, and some very interesting information. The information was that Sunshine had come by a week after we’d left for Mexico and paid Ratko off and told him that Darkey wouldn’t need the flat anymore. Ratko liked me and he was a close old file and so casually he asked Sunshine where I was and Sunshine said that I’d gone back to Ireland, for good. All this only a week after we’d left. One week. The bad news was that Sunshine came with a curly-haired blond guy who departed with my bloody TV and radio and a rucksack full of miscellaneous items. Ratko went in later and sold the rest of my gear for twenty bucks to the tenant across the hall. The good news was that he had saved from the garbage my driving license, social security card, and ATM card in the hope that I might write and claim them one day. The ATM card got me access to about a hundred dollars and I give it to Ratko for board….

  We’re at breakfast.

  Toast, sausage, egg, fried black bread, vodka, and coffee.

  Ratko’s wife asks Ratko to ask me what happened to my foot, what happened to me, but I give him a look. We talk sports from the paper and about the Kosovars and Tito and why Zagreb is beautiful but Belgrade isn’t (the answer, apparently, is because of collaboration).

  Yeah, and we talk football. Northern Ireland has no chance of qualifying for the World Cup, but I live a little on the glory days of ’82 and ’86. What will happen to the Yugoslavian team is anyone’s guess.

  Once mighty Balkan superpower will split into six, maybe eight teams, Ratko says, sadly. We chew our toast and drink our coff
ee.

  And my friend, Michael, how do you feel? he asks me after a dish of what I take to be a type of black pudding.

  In general?

  In general.

  Well, sometimes I hallucinate about the armies of the dead marching over the Triborough Bridge, but most of the time I’m ok.

  He winks at me.

  Your sense of humor, he says, and he’s inwardly glad his wife has no English.

  I finish breakfast, get up, get my stick, go out for a walk, come back …

  At dinner that night the wife was mumbling loud over the cabbage. It was getting clear that it was time to go. He broached the subject delicately over vodka, and it was like water off my back.

  Really, Michael, I am not kidding. It is perhaps soon that you look for somewhere else to stay. I love you, you stay forever, but Irina, you know.

  I know, I said, cheerfully, and continued eating.

  For the next few days this theme of my departure was Ratko’s relentless leitmotif. But I wasn’t taking hints, there was nowhere for me to go. Ratko was being got at from three sides: Slavic hospitality, duty to a friend, and a suspicious caricature of a wife who wanted me out before whatever doom pursued me found me here. And there was doom, the dog had stopped eating and wouldn’t let anyone near it, an unheard-of thing until I showed up.

  Ben Franklin famously put the limit of fish and houseguests at three days, and his mates were mostly Quakers and gentlemen. I’d been there nearly two weeks. Ratko wouldn’t throw me out and he liked having me around but finally the missus was too much: nagging him all night and all day and eventually the poor love cracked, got off his fat ass, packed sandwiches, went hunting, came back blitzed and singing and saying that he’d found me a place.

  Ratko knew a Russian guy who happened to be pals with a Jamaican guy who happened to be the super of a building they were doing over on Lenox and 125th. They wanted people in there to keep crack addicts and other miscreants out during the makeover and I could probably live rent-free for a month or two till I got my bearings.