by Tom O'Neill
When he got to the petrol station, he first spotted the worried figure of Kevin. ‘Homepage’ was what they called him in school because the round glasses and floppy hair made him look like a Google doodle, and because he knew everything. Dark remembered that he was still his most reliable friend. He could always depend on him. Then he saw that Kevin wasn’t alone and he cursed him under his breath for his unreliability. Next to him was Ciara. She seemed older in jeans and jumper. Her jet black hair was tied back and she had shiny red studs in her ears. He felt a wave of reddening in his face. He didn’t want to meet her under these circumstances. He went over to them. She smiled and her green eyes seemed to be waiting for him to say something to her. She sort of turned up her palm to give him a small wave.
‘So, you wanted to hang out?’ asked Kevin.
Dark shrugged. He had intended telling Kevin that he was needing a lookout while he did some graffiti on the back wall of the Emporium; that he needed a three-ring warning on the phone if Saltee appeared. That was all he had wanted from Kevin. But now it was too complicated. Ciara wouldn’t put up with just hanging around at the garage without asking the questions that Kevin would not ask. She would think he was dodgy. Maybe a vandal or a robber even.
‘Well, you called us. Do you want to go into town or go sit in the park or what?’ Kevin asked.
‘Us? I called you,’ said Dark, only realising how that sounded when she stepped away. ‘I mean, it was nothing. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up with you later, maybe.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, isn’t that a bit rude?’ said Kevin. ‘Why did you tell me to meet you here?’
‘Just because,’ said Dark, as they walked away. She looked over her shoulder at him and he knew she was thinking he was odd.
It didn’t seem very fair. Most people in school still lived their lives like he had once lived his. Back when it was him and his dad and his mam in their very nice house in the city. Back when he used to have takeaway every Thursday, movies every Friday, football or the mall with friends every Saturday, restaurant lunch every Sunday. He had a BB gun, two games consoles, and a prize collection of Marvel superhero original editions. Every day and every year just fell into place without him having to think about it once. For four years since, no day had seemed to fall quite into place for him or his mam. And then just when things had started to go better, all this. And here he was thinking how to climb a ten-foot wall at the back of a grey terrace in a nowhere town, while normal people went off to try stuff in the games shop and have a bant in the park.
Dark fixed his gaze on the Noble Weed across the road. He remembered the radio interview after the tomahawk incident. Shanto from NWLR asked, ‘Trev, you have such success with the Emporium, why did you need to court controversy, with, you know, this headshop revival thing?’
Saltee had answered so honestly that Shanto had laughed, thinking he was joking: ‘When I see a pigeon along the way, I pluck it.’
Painted in gold lettering on the plate glass: Healthy minds ... Find your Nirvana ... Salvia, the divine sage ... Reach your herbally higher plane ... How would he even begin to know what he was looking for in there? He again deferred that thought. He had set himself a job and he would do it.
He waited till he saw Saltee stick his head out, look up and down the street and then emerge in his white shirt, which he always wore open and with the sleeves rolled up even on really cold evenings like this one. He was sporting a hipster goatee and tight jeans, for both of which he was too old. His shoes were a light tan colour like his skin. He was carrying a cash box. He locked the door and stepped into his red pickup truck, which Dark hadn’t noticed parked in the side alley. When the pickup disappeared onto the ring road, Dark assumed that the coast was clear.
He crossed the road quickly with his parka hood pulled up. He headed into the alley. Nobody saw him, he was pretty sure. Conveniently there was a rotting pallet at the end of the lane. He propped that against the wall to give himself a precarious leg up. With his arms over the top, he quickly pulled himself over and dropped down the other side. Suddenly the name of the shop repeating in his head was sounding nothing like Connie’s muttered words. This was all wrong. But the Red had confirmed it, hadn’t he? The Red would know. Then he thought of Connie. No turning back now.
He was in a concreted yard, unnaturally neat, just like Saltee’s farm yard. His mother called him Arthur the sometimes sensible one. This was not very sensible, not even by comparison with Connie.
Against the back wall there were plastic pallets with KE shipping labels. And boxes filled with stone ornaments, garden elves and the like. Along the side wall was a row of identical old-style lamp posts and imitation water pumps, all with cast-iron vines and fat baby-faced fairies crawling up them.
Distracted by this, Dark crossed the yard to a back window of the shop without noticing the open door of the shed in the corner which backed onto the rear of Kaizer’s Emporium, and without hearing sounds of two men working within it.
As he tried a window he saw it had magnetic sensors at the sides. Alarmed, of course. Even if he could prise it open, it was pointless. He was turning back to the wall in some relief when he noticed the other window was slightly open. It was releasing faint smells something like those which came from the chemistry lab in school. But that meant the alarm was off. He didn’t delay further. He couldn’t afford to. He slid the window fully up and climbed in.
Inside the shadowy shop, he finally faced the fact that this was the maddest thing in his mad life. He had no idea as to what he was doing here. He felt caged. He looked all around, desperate to see something that made any sense. Hanging on the walls there were all kinds of bongs. In glass cabinets, there were rows of plastic bottles with leafy labels. One cabinet was labelled ‘Health Supplements’. Another ‘Aromatherapy Oils’. The cabinet at the back wall held ‘Body Building Supplements’. And the one behind the counter had a label over it that said: ‘The Good Stuff ’. Inside it were glass jars with desiccated leaves, mushrooms, bits of bark, and pieces of what looked like rabbits’ feet. It wasn’t anything like he’d expected. What was before him was more like an array of the African potions he’d seen in a YouTube video about a witch doctor. A nauseous sensation crept over him. He thought he could hear distant drums. He looked down and saw he was standing on an animal pelt. Maybe a goat. Or a springbok. It felt alive, watching him. He was ready to grab just about anything to justify his trip and bolt back to daylight. Then his eye fell on a jar standing among a row of jars, each with a browning chestnut leaf inside. There was something different about this particular jar. It looked much older than the others. Like it was hiding out in the open. He took it down. The glass top was air-tight; he wrenched it off. In the fresh air, the leaf inside crumbled instantly to papery fragments. Dark wasn’t sure what to do. Whenever he broke something as a child he would hide it until he could figure out how to fix it or find the right time to tell his mam. So it may have been out of instinct that he poured the leaf crumbs into his inner pocket, the hold for many things he had yet to decide about. He stepped back and stood on something that rocked under his foot. As he bent to pick up a truncheon that Saltee apparently felt he needed to keep behind the counter, the jar squeezed itself from his fingertips. Its shattering made a noise like a shout, and Dark was relieved at the break in the silence.
Some seconds later, Dark became aware of a loud argument outside the open window. The crashing noises in the shop had apparently alerted Nighthawk security – that is, the two men who did bouncer duty at the Emporium and in the daytime, it seemed, did odd jobs such as sorting Saltee merchandise in the adjoining back shed. He knew both voices. One, thick with ignorance, was that of Henry Hogg who had been famous in Mullet for cross-country running until he took up body building. The other voice, which addressed Hogg as ‘O’Boy’, was that of a fat man called Johnson. Lads at school said that Johnson had fled Nigeria after eating his mother. Dark wasn’t so sure about that. But he did not doubt that e
ither of these men could do him serious damage if they caught him.
Johnson was not happy about the instruction that he should go in first. He was saying, ‘I don’t trust this place. There could be something very dangerous in there making all that noise.’
‘In! That’s an order!” shouted Hogg. ‘Get your fat arse in there!’
Dark felt the truncheon drop from his hand; the urge to continue using it had dried up as mysteriously as it had welled. He stepped through the mess of broken glass to the front door, wrestling the two locks open. Outside on the pavement was a short man with a heavy moustache and a walking stick. He let Dark pass but got in the way of Hogg and Johnson as they emerged, giving Dark a few metres. As Dark ran, the hood of his parka blew back.
Hogg was yelling, ‘Stop, you! Hey, Lanky! I’ve seen you before! Come back here to me! I’m going to pulverise you!”
Dark was faster than them and when he turned the next corner, the overgrown old graveyard at the top of Hill Street seemed like the place to run for. He had spent a while there with Connie one Saturday trying to read the partly-eroded names and working out the life spans of various ancestors. He wished Connie was here now. These two would not dare come near him. Connie would know how to sort the whole thing out. ‘A bit of a misunderstanding there boys, that’s all,’ or ‘No harm, no foul,’ would not sound so persuasive when it was coming out of Dark’s mouth.
In the graveyard there was only one place to go. The table stone over a McLean, first initial disappeared, who had been left here in 1721. Dark remembered thinking on the day of the inspection that it would be a great place to hide, never imagining that he would have to actually climb under it some day. Changed circumstances. As he lay in the dark, barely breathing, he thought that phrase had been made just for him. Arthur McLean of the Ever Changing Circumstances. He gazed across through long grass at the men at the gate.
He heard Hogg saying, ‘Holy smoke!’ as he looked nervously about. He had a reputation for being religious and getting into vicious tempers about blasphemy. Last year he had beaten a lad queuing for an Emporium gig, for saying, ‘Hogg, you look as gay as Jesus in your uniform.’
Johnson shrugged and said, ‘Henry O’Boy, it seems like the fellow has run for protection from his ancestors. I am not for coming between them.’
Hogg said, ‘I thought you people were Christian.’
‘I’m just stating the obvious facts of the matter, tha’s all,’ said Johnson, with a deep round laugh.
Hogg too seemed to be losing the will to proceed. Searching an overgrown graveyard at dusk might have seemed a bit more than the Nighthawks were paid for. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before!’ he shouted. ‘It will come back to me later and then the boss will come get you!’
Dark didn’t doubt that Hogg would remember where he had seen him before. He wished Connie could have just steered clear of people like Hogg, as normal people do. Dark’s mam said Connie was full of fatal attractions. A strange thing for her to say. Dark had been in the Queen Mary the day that Connie had pulled up outside the Emporium. Hogg was standing with his shoulders back and arms crossed over the new maroon Nighthawks uniform. He had surveyed them through tortoise shell Ray Bans and signalled them to move on. Connie had rolled down the window and shouted, ‘Good Jesus, is it you Henry? I thought it was Lady Gaga. Have the Shitehawks beaten up many school kids this week?’ A group of women had stopped on the street to laugh at Henry as he shook his fist at Connie from afar, not daring to come closer. Before retreating inside the Emporium, he had certainly seen Dark in the passenger seat. Soon he would remember. Then he would be able to tell Saltee who it was who’d been breaking bottles and shelves in his shop. And then they’d have the man with the moustache as a witness. Dark was about to enter a whole new world of trouble.
Hogg muttered something that Dark couldn’t hear and they left. If they had waited a minute longer they’d have had him because just then something beside him moved. Lying there in the blackness with the stone overhead almost touching his nose, he was sure it was a skull. And then he felt himself sinking in the bare damp clay. Maybe his remaining senses were trying to escape him. Nighthawks or not, he bolted from his hide faster than a hare, and vaulted the back wall of the graveyard without even checking what he would land in; a stony clump of nettles, as it happened.
He realised he couldn’t go back to the garage to get his bike. They might still be hanging around on the street. He knew his way across the fields out to the back road. Even with a possibly sprained ankle and nettle stings up to his knees, he ran on until he was back in Kill, on McLean ground. He sat down exhausted in the hayshed. He knew that he was in over his head. Saltee would have the Gardaí out interviewing him by tomorrow. He’d left fingerprints all over the place. Sergeant Curtain wouldn’t be able to get him out of this one. And for all that, he had only the fragments of a leaf, of no imaginable use to Connie or anybody else.
He could pack a bag tonight and leave altogether. Leave his mother, Connie, the farm and the whole mess and start his own life somewhere. He was big enough to pass himself off as an older guy and he was sure he could get bar or restaurant work in Dublin or further away. Even as this thought settled him, he knew in his heart he was not going to do it. He knew that his mam and Connie thought they needed him around no matter what kind of crap he had gotten himself into. Tomorrow could bring what it wanted; he really wanted to see them now.
He called up the contact number that his mother had sent him for Brian. ‘Of course, son,’ said Brian. ‘Never hesitate to ask. I’ll drop in to do the milking and whatever else you want done. You should know that most around here would do anything for Con and his people.’
For the drive to Cork, Dark phoned the first other person who came into his head. The Red said, ‘Any hour, any location, any problem, The Red is your only man.’ Maybe being on the open road with The Red would distract him from fear of hospitals.
Even before Dark had the calves and dogs fed, the enormous orange truck was in the yard. The Red walked around behind him, standing well back and giving useless advice about which calves should get more milk and which none.
The Red didn’t directly ask anything about how Connie was. But when they sat into the truck, he plugged out his MP3 player from the system for a minute and turned to Dark, ‘And tell me, have you it sorted out yet, this thing with the big fella?’
If such a strange question had come from a regular person, Dark might have dwelt on it more. But he knew there was no point, with The Red. There was not even any point in complaining about the bad advice to rob the shop. The Red would just deny having ever heard of such a thing. Besides, it wasn’t as though Connie had not warned him often enough never to listen to anything The Red said. Dark looked down at Georgina going on a circular prowl. The Red didn’t wait long for an answer. The music, 70s disco, came back on full blast. The trailer-less Mack revved to the max and spun gravel in every direction as they headed for the road. Hitting every corner and not slowing for any pothole, it was beyond Dark’s comprehension how this truck always looked new. Out on the main road, The Red amused himself with high-speed tailgating two guys in a BMW who he claimed had cut in front of him. Eventually the BMW driver lost his nerve and pulled over. ‘Yeah, that’s right, fool,’ whined The Red into the CB mike he had rigged to a loud hailer on the roof. ‘Get that piece of crap off my highway.’
In the hospital, Dark was shocked by the scene in the ward. His mam was sitting in a chair next to the bed looking washed out. She didn’t even comment on him getting a lift with The Red, with whom she’d forbidden him from ever taking a ride. She stood and hugged him. That wasn’t her way.
Connie was propped, half sitting. His face was sunken and pale. He moved his eyes rather than his head to look towards them and barely nodded. The Red got bored and moved to the other side of the room to lie on the bed opposite. He yawned and went immediately to sleep.
You should always watch the china-eyed collie, daughter of the soil.
Dark found himself trying to fill the silence. ‘I managed to milk the mad heifer with her kicking the clusters off only twice,’ he said. ‘The simmental calves have started eating nuts. Oh and by the way, the diesel tank is getting empty.’ He was telling everything except the most important bit of information. That he might be getting arrested tomorrow.
They were both looking at him. He never babbled. They probably put it down to a reaction of some kind.
His mam was called by a nurse and Connie signalled that he wanted Dark to come closer. There it came again. Connie saying, ‘Tallta lonmaree nobladee.’
‘Lonmaree is Maire Fada?’ Dark tried quietly, out of the hearing of the others. Connie’s face brightened for an instant as he nodded. ‘And “nobladee” is the Noble Weed?’ The head shook and Dark’s heart sank.
His mam came back saying the medical team were on their way. They were running late with their evening round.
The group entered, all in white coats except the man in front who looked like he was on his way to a dinner party. When the lead man glanced with an eyebrow raised at The Red, a nurse stared at Dark expecting an explanation. Dark shrugged. The nurse went over and shook him, saying, ‘Good God you could at least have taken off the boots, what kind of maneen are you at all?’
‘Everyone is always down on the little man,’ he snarled. They stepped back from him. ‘I’m at least as sick as that big galoot. And no medicine at all for me. How do you explain that?’ He started coughing as though he was going to vomit and then limped into the bathroom.
A couple of them nodded to Dark’s mam.
‘Are you the family? We are sending him home,’ said the man in charge.
‘But he can’t stand. He can’t speak,’ said Dark’s mother, shocked into short sentences. ‘Have you even found out what it is?’