Mick

by Chris Lynch

  “Workin’. Holidays they gotta go in second shift, so they took off already to pick up their truck.” The Cormacs work for the phone company. “Said they’d be back in a while.”

  The chunky Maguffin sisters mounted the stage, blocking out the musicians behind them. Singing to their combined families of thirteen kids, they squawked a “McNamara’s Band” so aggressive the people up close—people who can stand quite a lot of abuse or they wouldn’t be sitting there—scootched their chairs backward, and Brendan yelled “You suck, get off the stage!” Their children, all of them blond as new baseballs, laughed their little devil laughs, munched onion rings and buffalo wings in their too-small, mismatched polyester sweat suits. The sisters didn’t hear, sang blithely on with the same conviction and confidence as everybody else.

  “Where’s Baba?” Terry asked.

  “Cormacs carried him home,” Angie said, “dropped him on his porch.”

  The two laughed and butted each other again, as hard as they could. Blood rolled down from the middle of Terry’s forehead, between his eyes, over the crooked nose, turned, ran out along the deep crease beside his lip and chin, lined them like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He never noticed.

  I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anybody else in the place either. I turned my face once more to the mirror behind the bar. To myself. I couldn’t look at him either. I took the latest of the beers Brendan was pushing on me, and I drank it.

  I watched in the mirror as the one woman in the place nobody was talking to stood, ambled stiffly to the stage, patted her bouffant, sucked her brown cigarette, and sang “My Wild Irish Rose.” Had she not heard it earlier? All three times? Did she not care? Why should she, since nobody else seemed to. Tears fell, bodies swayed. She got a rousing ovation. I was about to heave.

  “Hey champ,” Augie said low into my bit ear. “Havin’ a good time? Bein’ the big man? Feels good, don’t it? We’ll turn you inta somethin’ useful yet.”

  “Get away from me, Augie,” I said.

  “Sure I will, little boy. You had a big day, I understand. But listen, you tell that little Sullivan ratty friend a yours that I’m lookin’ ta have a little chat with his ass.” As he backed away, Augie pinged my ear.

  “Hey brother, what happened to your ear?” It wasn’t my actual brother who asked, but Danny. Terry and the boys like to call each other brother, especially at sloppy times like this.

  “An animal bit me,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” he said, genuinely concerned, but not stimulated enough to inquire any further.

  “Y’know, I’m not prejudiced, but...” I heard a deep voice say to Terry.

  “Nah, neither am I,” Terry could barely choke the words out through the laughter, his own, then the other man’s. I heard the slapping of palms.

  “Hey, hey, hey, hey, everybody shut up!” Brendan yelled. He flicked a switch and killed the power to the microphone into which Augie’s grandmother was squealing “Take Me Home to Mayo,” while Augie yelled “We love ya, Grammy.” A few bars later, she stopped. Brendan aimed the remote at the TV and cranked the volume. The reporter, the same one from the night before, was describing the “chaos” and “savagery” of the parade. The bar patrons, most of whom had only heard about it until now, watched the videotape.

  Again, for the camera, Terry charged into the Gay Pride group. Again, the Cormacs threw eggs. Again, Terry yelled obscenities. Then, in the background, out of the anonymity of the crowd, again I threw an egg. Then another, as Augie seemed to merely hover behind me.

  And again, in close-up, Terry hammered away at the Cambodian man who had charged for no apparent reason into the fray.

  Like a heavyweight championship fight that would be playing on that very same bar screen, the crowd went berserk, punching the air, ducking, duking, cheering the video Terry on to victory.

  By the time it ended I had my face deep in my hands, my elbows propped on the bar. The pounding on Terry’s back sounded like timpani.

  “Hey,” he said when it subsided. I parted my hands enough to peek out at the ocean of beer before us. There had to be forty full pints. Gifts. I took one. I didn’t feel like accepting it, I didn’t feel like drinking it, but I sure as hell felt like having it stroking my brain.

  “What happened to your ear?” Terry said, finally noticing.

  “Sonofabitch clipped me,” I said.

  “Ay,” he said, and clinked my glass with his. He was thrilled.

  “Ay,” I said dead, and drank lively.

  “And what happened to me?” Terry laughed, seeing the head butt blood in the mirror. I figured it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother telling him. I just stared at the two of us in the marbly mirror—Terry scarred and bloody and ugly and drinking and smiling at the same time so that the beer ran out of the corners of his mouth, me scarred and bloody and drinking and not smiling. I didn’t look like him, goddamn it, him with his orange hair and me with my red. I looked out beyond us, at these people, my people, as they say. I could have done something right there. I could have done something to my brother. I stared and stared at his stupid reflection, and a little at mine, but mostly his, and I could have done something to him. The more I stared, the more I was going to do it. All it would take now was one tiny push, like if somebody got up and sang “If You’re Irish, Come into the Parlor,” that would do it. First I’d puke, then I’d strangle my brother.

  Good thing I never had to. When the cops tromped in, the place went silent. The sea of bodies—very much like a body of liquid by this time—parted reluctantly. Everybody knew where the boys were headed. Everybody but Terry, who was so gone by the time they tapped him on the shoulder he kept drinking even though he could see them in the mirror.

  “Boooo,” came the first lone voice. Then everyone else. “Boooooo.” Everyone booed the cops, who laughed, covered their ears, waved it off.

  “Come on, Terry,” the lead cop said. “We have to take you. You’re on video, for god’s sake.”

  “Can I finish my drink first?” Terry said.

  “Of course. We’re not inhuman.”

  Terry leaned way over to one side, to show them the mother lode he was working on. “I’ll be with ya in about six hours,” he said.

  The cop smiled, took Terry by the arm, and they went peacefully. The booing slurred into one sound like a barn full of cows.

  “Jesus, you people,” the cop said. “It ain’t like we never arrested him before. We’ll try to have him back before closing time.” The booing and mooing stopped.

  Terry’s crooked grin widened, his legend growing with every unsteady stride. Somewhere deep in the crowd, somebody started whistling the song from The Great Escape, from the scene when the Nazi guards were leading Steve McQueen back to solitary confinement and another prisoner threw him his baseball glove.

  When they were gone, the tin whistle rose up slowly, serenely, and the snare drum rolled. Marion Junior climbed the stage and started singing with Marian at his feet. Could it be? “Wild Colonial Boy”? Again? Only this time it was like a dirge instead of the usual romp. In tribute to Terry.

  Danny leaned into me. “I guess you’re in charge now, bro,” he said.

  I got off my stool and started digging my way through the room. Somebody spoke to me, I didn’t even know who because I didn’t look.

  “Brother, y’know, I’m no racist, but—”

  “It’s a good thing there are no racists around here,” I said, “or things could’ve gotten ugly today, huh.”

  The guy thought it was a joke, and a pretty good one as he turned and repeated it to the group behind him. I pushed on past.

  When I reached the stage, I tapped Marian on the shoulder, asking her to excuse me. Then I grabbed her son by the ankles and shook him, nearly taking the legs out from under him.

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “Would you stop already? Just shut the hell up. Stop singing the same stupid damn songs over and over. Move on, for chrissake.
”

  He stopped singing. Everybody stared like there was something terribly wrong with me as I walked out and “Wild Irish Rose” started up again.

  Part Two

  What Have You Done, My Blue-Eyed Son?

  “YO, MEN.”

  Funny how life doesn’t change for Baba. He could kill a person on a Saturday and still he’d be waiting on his porch Monday morning to say “Yo, men,” and catch the bus to school with Sully and me. Then, while we waited for the bus he would still do his stupid trick of the day or tell his disgusting joke of the day, before mentioning that oh by the way I offed a guy over the weekend, if he thought to mention it at all.

  “Yo, watch this,” he said as he leaned against the bus stop sign, hung his head, and let a long, clingy spit hang down.

  “Ugh, god,” I said and started to turn away. But he made that urgent grunting noise the way people do in movies when they’re tied and gagged and are trying to say something important. So, I looked, fool that I am.

  The spit dropped lower, and lower, somehow still holding together, until it hung six inches from the pavement. He paused for a second, let it swing a bit, then he snapped it up, sucking the whole thing all the way back into his mouth like a great string of spaghetti.

  Sully just stared at him blankly. He was kind of shocky this morning. We all were kind of shocky, except for Baba, who was kind of Baba this morning.

  I started to say something, choked, tried again. “You’re an animal, Baba,” I said. “Not just because you can do stuff like that, but because you actually spend time, thinking up stuff like that.”

  “Oh ya? What kind of animal am I?”

  “A pig, I guess. Ya, like a big giant razorback warthog pig, only with an even smaller brain.”

  “Hey, Bones, you got a feelin’ like you wanna be dead this mornin’ or somethin’?”

  “No, I got a feelin’ like maybe I wanna start associating with a better class of creature, that’s the kind of feeling I got.”

  “Oh what, you a better class a creature than me now?”

  I hesitated, but only to make it look good. It didn’t take a lot of thought. “Hell yes.”

  “Gargle my balls, pal,” Baba said, grabbing his crotch and yanking it in my direction.

  “Well, I stand corrected then, don’t I?” I said, warming up pretty quickly to the superiority idea.

  “Well, Bones, y’know you standin’ here makin’ y’self out somethin’ better than me, like you’re so different than me, when my old man got a videotape at home from the news that says you ain’t nothin’ like that at all.”

  “Screw, Baba. All right? I ain’t nothing like you, you ain’t nothing like me, and that’s all there is to it.” I turned my back to him, watched down the street for the bus.

  Baba grabbed my shoulder from behind with one big powerful paw and spun me around with a jerk. He smiled mean as always and smarter than usual in my face.

  “Y’know, I heard a million guys like you talk this trash before, this ‘I’m better than you’ shit.”

  “No, not guys like me.”

  “Exactly like you. And you know what else? They’re all still here. Still just like me. Just like you.”

  How crazy was I? How well was Baba getting under my skin? I pushed him. Put both of my hands on his car hood of a chest, and tried to move all twelve tons of him. He didn’t move. I moved. As I pressed my hands into him and shoved, my feet skidded backward and I slipped off the curb into the gutter.

  “Ouch,” he laughed in my face. “Please, no more, no more.”

  It was useless, obviously. Sully snapped out of his trance long enough to shake his head no, telling me to simply let it go. So I did, sort of. I looked away again, down the block to where the bus was now in sight. That was all I wanted, just to get on the bus, let Baba go all the way to the back like we always do, and then not go with him. To be done with him. But that would have been the smart thing, so of course it was out of the question. My mouth wasn’t quite finished yet. I had to add a real snotty, “You ain’t worth my time, pal.”

  “Oh, you’re so tough, Bones. I guess I’m just lucky I ain’t no four-foot-tall gook chick or you’d really be showin’ me what a man you are.”

  He shrunk me. As I stood in the gutter I felt like the curb was up to my chin, like the red-faced little rat I was. The bus pulled up, the door opened right in front of me. Instead of getting on, I turned, walked up to Baba—who leered at me—and took a wild poke at him. Before I could hit him, he reached out and seized me by the throat, squeezing, lifting me up on my toes.

  “So you’re feelin’ a little crazy right now for some stupid goddamn reason,” he said, almost friendly. “Don’t go riskin’ y’life over somethin’ that’s gonna pass away like a hangover.” Then he threw me at the bus, saying as I stumbled aboard with Sully’s help, “That one’s for free, Bones. Don’t be expectin’ no more of it.”

  I was crazy. Baba hadn’t done anything to me actually, but I was focused on him, on what he was, and what I decided I wasn’t. We used to be the same—that was the problem, and that was bothering me more and more. So maybe I just figured if I could get Baba to murder me, that would separate us. I’d be somehow purified.

  Baba did sit by himself in the back, while Sully and I shared a double near the front. I stared out the window, feeling the welts rising on my neck from Baba’s grip. I looked at Sully, who was also staring at the red marks, shaking his head. We didn’t say anything the whole way to school.

  As I got off the bus, I was greeted. Sitting on the bench at the school stop were five seniors from the school, Asian guys, two down on the seat, three up on the seatback. I didn’t know any of them since, being a sophomore, there was no reason they would ever have talked to me before. But they sure wanted to talk to me now.

  “Saw your show on the TV the other night,” said the one everybody knows as Mr. Quan, the leader. “You looked good.”

  “Photogenic,” said one from behind.

  “Athletic,” said another.

  “You might have a career in the pictures,” Mr. Quan said.

  I had frozen in the bus doorway when they first started talking to me. Now with people barking at me to get out of the way, Sully gave me a little shove. As I stumbled off the bottom step, Mr. Quan rose and stood on the bench, staring knives right into my eyes.

  “Deep shit,” Sully whispered.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. What was this? I never had any trouble with any other kind of people before. Of course I never talked to or hung out with any either, but that was okay, that was the trade, wasn’t it? We just all leave each other alone and everybody’s cool, right? I never expected this.

  “What do they want with me?” I said, playing stupid with Sully and with myself.

  “Unfortunately, I think you’re famous, man.”

  That didn’t sink in right away. Then it did. “Oh my god...”

  Just as I was about to explain to them about the mistake, about what a fine guy full of goodness I actually was, they moved. They all stood, the lower-tier guys standing on the seat, the upper tiers standing high above. Then they came down, the front row hopping down to the sidewalk and the back row tilling their spots at exactly the same time. These boys had the sonofabitch choreographed. I was intimidated enough to squirt myself, but just a couple of drops.

  But I wasn’t goin’ nowhere. Uh-uh, couldn’t do that no matter how wrong they were about me. Can’t run, can’t say, “Let’s be reasonable about this.” You just can’t. I don’t know why you can’t, so don’t ask me. It’s just that the operation doesn’t run that way. Sully understood it too, standing there beside me looking as mean as he could, which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of mean, but it was a nice gesture anyway. We’d take our lumps together.

  Then the miracle thing. Just like a movie scene run backward, all five guys hopped right back into their original positions on the bench. Were we tough or what? Without turning, I looked at Sully out of the co
rner of my eye and saw him looking back at me.

  “We ain’t got no beef with you, O’Reilly,” Mr. Quan said, tough but nervous at the same time. Baba had just stepped off the bus, last as usual.

  Baba didn’t say a word, just stood hulking, arms folded across his chest, above and behind Sully and me. Mr. Quan stared, mostly at me, with blanching glances at Baba. Baba didn’t move. The Asian guys didn’t move. Sully and I certainly didn’t move—if Baba’d had a pouch like a kangaroo, we’d have been inside it.

  Mr. Quan tried once more. “We ain’t got no beef with you, O’Reilly.”

  “Sure you do,” Baba said coolly.

  That was it. Mr. Quan and his boys made a decent show of it by hanging around for another minute or so, but as soon as Baba spoke, they were already packing. Unless they could round up another twelve guys, they weren’t going to play with Baba.

  He waited for them to be completely cleared out before Baba split from us too.

  “Not such a bad thing, to have a animal around sometimes, huh, boys?” he said smugly.

  I started to thank him, but he waved me off. “Another freebie. You was pretty fortunate today, Bones, but don’t even bother to thank me. I wanna wish ya luck wit’ the rest of your life, bro, ’cause you’re gonna need it.”

  He walked away, and I knew I wouldn’t have Baba standing behind me ever again. That was scary. But that was good. Right?

  If My Fist Clenches, Crack It Open

  BABA NEVER, AT ANY time in his life, knew anything about anything that was worth knowing, so how was it that he knew my life was going to get so hard?

  The month following the whole St. Patrick’s mess lasted about six years.

  The Asian guys eventually caught up to me. I found a letter inside my lunch bag inside my locked locker, that said “Yum yum, this tuna sandwich is going to taste extra special good now,” and even though it seemed like nothing was done to the food, who the hell could eat it after that?

  I think six people in the school made eye contact with me all month, and those six I had fights with. To see me was to punch me.