by Peter Murphy
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.
‘S’OK.’
She took a packet of wipes from her handbag and dabbed at her undercarriage and pulled her tights back up.
‘First time, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
I felt strange and sort of sick. I wanted to go home, but it was too late to turn back.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It gets better.’
She unwound the car window, carefully tugged the rubber off of me and threw it into the ditch where it hung from a briar, withered and deflated. Again with the wipes, and she started the engine and manoeuvred the car around. We bumped down the lane and back onto the main road. She tousled my hair. I gave her a weak smile and zipped up my fly and buckled my belt.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘It’s fine.’
The sudden kindness in her voice made my eyes prickle. Silence swallowed everything. I didn’t speak again until we’d reached Ballo town. She insisted on running me all the way to the train station, even though it was out of her way.
As I got out, she leaned across the passenger seat and squeezed my arm. All I felt was sad and homesick.
I watched her drive away into the what-was-coming.
The train station was deserted. The digital timetable hanging over the platform said there were no more arrivals due until morning. The sky behind the mountains was beginning to redden up; another couple of hours and the light would fail and with it my chances of getting a lift home. The whole day had been for nothing.
I left the station and walked down the creaking woodenworks under the hulking shadow of a rust-coloured trawler moored to the dock by groaning ropes as thick as jungle vines. Dinghies and dories bumped against the boardwalk’s supporting struts. Across the sound, cranes and diggers silhouetted the skyline, and great white storage containers like sinister prefabs glowed yellow under sodium lights.
Disgusted with the world, I lit a cigarette.
Across the street, a car growled into life. It executed a rough U-turn and inched along the kerb. The back window rolled down and Gunter Prunty stuck his big head out.
‘Hop in.’
Fintan was in the driver’s seat, Davy hunched in the back on the far side. I flicked ash from my cigarette and stared at the tip. The prospect of getting into a car with those three wasn’t exactly appealing, but I didn’t want to be stranded in Ballo either.
‘All right.’
I tossed the cigarette. Gunter shouldered the door open and got out to let me in. Davy shoved over and stared out the window. The car stank of skunkweed and cowshit. Fintan twisted around in his seat.
‘Sorry ‘bout the squeeze,’ he said. ‘We’re carrying a load.’ He patted one of several fertiliser sacks dumped on the front passenger seat and stacked on the floor.
The car pulled onto the road and accelerated out of Ballo. Fintan turned on the car radio and punched the pre-sets. Pop songs and wafts of classical music. Traffic reports. Ads read by people talking faster than auctioneers. Two taps of a stick on a snare drum and a ceilidh combo piled hell for leather into a jig or a reel. Fintan turned it up so loud the sound was distorted. The noise and smoke made me dizzy. I realised I hadn’t eaten all day.
We bombed up the main Kilcody road, diddley-eye music blaring. Fintan drove like a lunatic, taking the bends at reckless speed. Occasionally he removed both hands from the wheel to adjust his ponytail, steering with his knees. Gunter lit a joint and passed it to Davy. The reek was foul. Through the windscreen, the broken white line blurred under the front of the bonnet like a tractor beam, reeling us home. The lights of Kilcody appeared in the distance. I willed them closer.
We reached the end of a long straight stretch of road and came up fast on a hairpin bend. The joint came round to me. I took a couple of drags and passed it over the headrest to Fintan. Eyes locked on the approaching bend, he reached back to take the joint and knocked it from my fingers and it tumbled end over end into his lap, sparks flying. He yelped, and the car swerved all over the road as he clawed between his legs. His elbow jarred the radio’s volume switch and the ceilidh music jumped to a deafening level. Headlights flashed. An oncoming car loomed in the windscreen and blazed past us, horn blaring. We skidded around the bend, skimming the far ditch, but somehow managed to stay on the road. Fintan finally located the joint and stuck it in his mouth. He killed the radio and glared over his shoulder.
‘You nearly burnt the balls off me, young fella.’
‘Never mind that,’ Davy said. ‘I think that was the squad car.’
‘Pull the other one.’
‘I’m serious.’
Fintan swivelled around, bug eyed.
‘If you’re winding me up, I’ll throttle you.’
‘I think he’s right,’ Gunter said. ‘I thought it was the squadder too.’
Fintan checked the rear-view mirror, horror spreading across his face like blood from a cut.
‘If they catch me I’m screwed,’ he said. ‘I’m barred from driving. I hope your pal’s on duty, Gunter.’
Davy twisted in his seat and peered through the grid of the defrosting panel on the back window.
‘Should I ditch the blow?’ he said.
‘Not yet,’ Gunter said, deadpan.
Fintan flicked off the lights and hugged the wheel. He floored the accelerator, nose almost touching the windscreen. The speedometer twitched towards the 70 mark as we hurtled through the twilight.
Just before we reached the outskirts of the village, Fintan turned the lights back on and hung a right out the coast road.
‘You can drop me off here,’ I said. ‘I’m going the other way.’
‘We’re not stopping anywhere until we get to the slaughterhouse,’ Fintan said.
A mile or so down the road we turned onto a grass split lane and clunked over the bars of a cattle grid and onto an expanse of balding waste ground. The old slaughterhouse was little more than a crude shed constructed from mismatched off-cuts of corrugated iron, its rickety roof insulated with a ragged patchwork of felt, the sole window blacked out with ripped plastic sacking. Gorse bushes peeped over a surrounding chicken wire fence.
We waited, ears sharpened against the stillness. No squad car.
Fintan put the handbrake on and boosted the radio. Someone spoke in Irish for a bit and then some old guy began to sing a sean nós air. Gunter got out and grabbed one of the fertiliser bags. The other two followed suit, dragging the heavy sacks toward the slaughterhouse door. I made as if to help, but Fintan ordered me to stay put. The sean nós singer’s dirge droned.
Fintan leaned in and popped the boot.
‘C’mere,’ he said.
I followed him around the back of the car. He swung the boot open.
Jamey was trussed up like an animal. His body was wedged between the spare wheel and the jack. His mouth was sealed with a strip of electrical tape and his hands were tied with binder twine that chafed his wrists an ugly red. His glasses were crooked on his nose and his eyes bulged like a spooked horse’s.
Everything telescoped. I tore the tape from Jamey’s mouth and tried to lift him out of the car, but something exploded against the side of my head and my ears whined. Rough hands yanked my arms behind my back and forced me to the ground, face first, my chest crushed against the hard cement. Blood leaked down the back of my throat, the sour tang of iron. Fintan was kneeling on my back and it was hard to breathe.
Gunter loomed over us, tall and silent as a standing stone. He grabbed Jamey by the scruff, hauled him out of the car and paused a moment. He seemed to consider his options.
Davy made limbering up shapes, rolling his shoulders.
‘Are we going to do this or what?’ he said.
From the car radio, a maudlin violin scraped out some godforsaken air.
Gunter kissed the knuckles of his right hand and swung. The impact sounded like someone cracking a belt. Jamey’s head rocked back and his knees gave out. Davy caught him, pinning the arms like he was holding a punchbag. Gunter kept
slugging. The dull sickening thuds and gasps and surprised sounds were loud in the calm summer’s evening. There was no hurry; that was the worst part. It went on and on until Gunter ran out of steam. Breathing heavily, he placed his hands on his knees, face flushed from the exertion.
‘Had enough?’ he panted. A drop of sweat wobbled from the tip of his nose. My neck ached from straining to see what was going on from my vantage point on the ground.
Jamey didn’t answer. Blood dribbled down his chin and his lips were all gashed and split. He gobbed a clot of bloody phlegm onto the ground.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Gunter said, and hiked up the leg of his jeans and removed a hunting knife from inside his boot. A shard of fading sunlight refracted off the blade. Jamey’s eyes followed it, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. Everything went quiet; even the music stopped for a moment. Then, from the car, a girl’s voice rang out, pure and unaccompanied.
Black is the colour...
Gunter grabbed Jamey’s wrists, sawed through the binder twine and quickly stepped away.
‘Strip,’ he said.
Jamey rubbed his wrists and wiped blood from his face with his sleeve.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said.
Gunter lifted a lock of Jamey’s fringe away from his eyes with the blade of the knife.
‘Do it. Unless you want a haircut.’ He traced a line through the blood and grime, all the way down Jamey’s cheek. ‘Or a facelift.’
Jamey stayed perfectly still, as though he hadn’t heard a word.
Gunter roared: ‘Now!’
Jamey began to take his clothes and runners off with clumsy hands. Gunter kicked the clothes into a pile. He planted his feet apart, unzipped, extracted himself and began to piss on them. Steam rose up, attracting midges. He shuddered as he finished pissing.
‘More than three shakes is a sin,’ Davy said.
Gunter pulled his fly up.
‘Just get in the fucking car, Dave.’
Fintan removed his knee from my back. I tried to push myself up, but he feinted a jab at my head, laughing when I flinched, and glared a moment, as if daring me to make another move. His eyes were cold and soulless, completely blank.
‘Come on, Fin,’ Gunter snapped.
They took their time getting back into the car. I half expected them to change their minds and come back, but eventually they slammed the car doors and started the engine and roared off through the gateway and across the cattle grid. The engine’s sound receded and then there was only a strained, taut silence.
Jamey sank to his haunches, wobbly as a calf. He was pale from shock, and his naked frame looked scrawny and fragile. I shrugged off my jacket and passed him my long lumberjack shirt. He knotted it around his middle with trembling hands. It hung from his waist like a skirt.
‘Got any smokes?’
It sounded like he’d had teeth pulled. Took him three matches to light the cigarette.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘This is my fault.’
‘You’re sorry?’
He hunkered like a primitive, glowering at the ground between his bare feet for a moment, then looked up at me through the smoke, one eye already closing over.
‘Where’d they find you?’ he said.
‘Outside the train station.’
He nodded.
‘Bad luck.’
‘Jamey, I have to tell you something.’
He shook his head.
‘No you don’t.’
He stared hard into my eyes. Maybe Canavan told him. Maybe Gunter. Either way he knew.
He spat on the ground and said, ‘It’s history, man. Piss in a river.’
And then he stood, wincing a bit.
‘Just tell me something,’ he said. ‘That night in the chapel. What possessed you?’
Slowly I shook my head.
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember any of it. Only what they showed me on the tape.’
Jamey nodded and moved his lower jaw around, as if making sure it was still attached to the rest of his head.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘something happened. You were raving like a loon, man. I thought you’d wake the whole village.’
‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘I was kind of in shock. Besides.’ He grinned. ‘I was getting some good stuff. You threw the chalice at the cross and started going apeshit, knocking over statues and upending the pews and all kinds of stuff. Holy Communion everywhere. Then your face went white. Actually, it was more a kind of green. You spewed all over the altar.’
‘They said it was...’
‘I know. It wasn’t. After you puked your guts up, you ran off. I followed you, but I forgot the camcorder. And the tape.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Jamey looked me in the eye again.
‘It’s done.’
Ash fell from the tip of his cigarette. You could feel the whole summer’s heat trapped in the ground.
He blew smoke into the air and chuckled.
‘Balinbagin was like a holiday home, man. All I did was write. You were the one doing the time. I heard you were miserable. I was kind of touched.’
He flicked his cigarette away.
‘Y’know, I was waiting for this all summer. Dreading it. Now it’s done.’
‘How did you know what was going to happen?’ I said.
He bent over the pile of piss-sodden clothes and took money and keys from his jeans.
‘Because it happened before,’ he said. ‘Gunter told me.’
He reached inside his jacket and removed a folded sheaf of papers from his jacket.
‘Here,’ he said, and thrust them at me. ‘Read this when you get home.’
The papers were damp in parts, but still legible. I stuffed them into my back pocket.
Jamey stuck his hand out. I shook it without quite knowing why.
‘Look after yourself,’ he said and began to move stiffly across the yard.
‘Where you going?’ I said.
‘Away. Don’t tell Dee anything. Just play dumb, no matter how freaked out she gets. I’ll call her as soon as I can.’
He walked slowly across the cattle grid. Before he disappeared into the evening light, he called out: ‘I’ll send a postcard.’
Then he disappeared, and all I had left of him were stories.
The old crow knows the story. He sees it all unfold like a sequence of silent irised images. Figures move in herky-jerky movements, but no matter what happens he does not intervene, for in his starved bird mind all mortal events are merely dreams of what happens. Even a crow knows that in dreams you cannot change a thing but merely watch with a detachment that is at once benign and malign, like a bored god, or a bored god’s messenger.
VIII
My mother was in bed by the time I got home. I was so tired and sore I couldn’t make it up the stairs so I collapsed into her armchair and took Jamey’s papers from my back pocket. They smelled and I had to carefully peel the sheets apart to read them. And maybe it was shock, but as I read his words I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry or both.
Balinbagin Boys’ Home
7 Priory Road
Balinbagin
John,
I wasn’t going to write (it’s hard to be bothered when the correspondence is all one way) but the weirdest thing happened. Your mother came to see me this morning. She asked me not to let on, but you know me, can’t keep my trap shut. I thought maybe she’d be fishing for information about a certain person’s involvement in you-know-what, but the subject never came up. She just asked if they were feeding me and if I was keeping out of trouble. She stayed about half an hour and listened to me yammering on and then she left. I still don’t know what to make of it.
Anyway, seeing as I’m writing, I might as well send you my latest story. The stuff’s pouring out of me these days—must be the artist-friendly environment. I hope you’re keeping them in a safe place, they might be worth money someday.
Talk soon.
JC
The Cuckold
by Jamey Corboy
Gunter Prunty was a big man, and not easily intimidated. As a schoolboy, he was able to whale the crap out of boys three or four years older and not think twice about it. Even the teachers were a little scared of him. But one thing Gunter dreaded more than anything was being asked to stand up in English class to read aloud. It reduced him, a giant of a lad, to a stuttering red-faced mess.
Gunter was not what you’d call a man of letters. He’d never read a book in his life. And yet, at the grand old age of twenty-seven, poorly schooled, having failed to complete his Leaving Cert, he became fixated on a word he’d heard somewhere. Not your everyday word either. It stuck in his brain like a fishhook.
Cuckold.
Maybe he’d heard it on the telly or in a film. He wasn’t a hundred per cent on the meaning, but he definitely had a hunch it pertained to what had been going on with him and Maggie, so one night in Donahue’s he asked the Corboy lad, who fancied himself a bit of a scholar. When Corboy told him, Gunter figured they might as well have printed his mug shot where the word appeared in the dictionary.
Cuckold.
He could almost taste it. He tongued it like a bad tooth. Pronounced it different ways. Played charades with it. Cuckold.
Sounds like: Cock-holed. Butt-plugged by another man in a three-way pile-up. A fuck sandwich, with Maggie as the filling. That girl had his heart scalded, no two ways about it.
Cuckolded.
Now it sounded kind of chickeny.
Buk-awk-buk-buk.
The weird thing was, deep down, in some secret, dirty place he could barely bring himself to acknowledge, Gunter was excited by her carry on, because anything was better than being bored, and most of the time, he and Maggie bored each other stupid. Yes, jealousy festered inside him like an ulcer, inflamed him with rage. But at the same time, the thought of her with another man sent an illicit shiver through his mind. Sometimes he lay in bed pulling the guts out of himself, imagining her face contorted with pleasure as she writhed under some gurning punter. But always afterwards, his ejaculate hardening to a crust, he felt pathetic and ashamed.