What can I say? I felt for him. Back home I've fallen asleep in church a few times but Ma always slapped me back awake sharpish. 'The shame of it,' she'd say. But Derry wasn't concerned with the shame of it when I eventually woke him up. His Pops was a Rev but he had no shame - or at least had learned to hide it so well that's what others would think.
That made me curious, maybe even envious, so I asked him when the service was over and the greetings were done and we were outside, on our own: 'Do you believe in God, Derry?'
'No, but I've seen the Devil,' he said. For a second he looked serious, dead serious, but then he added, 'And his name is Ronnie James Dio.'
That just about killed me.
It just about killed Derry as well.
We were retching with laughter by the time the Rev caught up with us in the car lot. 'Was I that funny in there?' he said, not looking too amused at us.
'Nah,' I answered back, trying to be instantly serious and failing.
Derry choked, 'No, Pops, it's not you.'
'What is it then? Share the joke, why don't you?' the Rev said.
'Nothing,' said Derry.
'Must be X-rated humour then,' said the Rev and turned away, looking disappointed in me.
I think it was a bit rich of him, don't you? Firing me the disappointed looks when he hadn't taken us out for a Rancheros' burger or a go on the range when he'd said
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he would. And all when we hadn't even complained once that he hadn't kept his word.
Typical Da - talks a good day out with his son but never comes through, never keeps his word. Women say all men are liars and they're right. Ask a son; ask any son where he learned to lie. At the feet of my father, the answer will be. You could ask Derry if he was still alive and he would say, I know he'd say, 'Yeah, Wil, that's where I learned - at the feet of a Reverend.'
Mom Horrowitz hadn't gone to the second morning service. She'd stayed home to throw together the only sit-down meal I had with the whole family, ever.
When we got back from church it was just about ready to eat and me and Derry, we were starving hungry for it.
The Rev asked me to say grace the way I would back in Ulster.
'Ta for the grub. Our Father,' I said. 'Amen.' 'That it?' asked the Rev. I nodded - that was my amazing grace. 'You don't stand on ceremony much do you, Wil?' sniped Tiara, trying to sound all important. 'Nah,' I said.
The Rev shrugged and said, 'OK people, let's eat.'
Mom Horrowitz had half done up these big T-bone steaks for everyone, along with some mashed potatoes and grits and beans. It looked tasty but appearances were deceiving. The meat was totally soggy with blood. The vegetables were soggy with bloody water. You could tell Mom Horrowitz didn't have much practice at cooking real food. But give her a TV dinner anyday and everyday and she made them just fine.
'Even better than my Ma's,' I lied to her. And like my own Ma she liked me lying better than if I'd told the truth. It was what she was used to.
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Derry wanted us to go and try to fix Suzi again after dinner but, all that blood in the meat did something to my guts. Or at least that's what I think it was. I mean what else could it have been - an internal injury from my lost love? Nah.
Anyway, the blood kind of ruined that last afternoon of the first week in America for me. And what really ruined the evening to follow was two more church services on top of the infernal stomach ache.
God! Who says Prods never do penance?
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14
The American Dream-on
It could have been that damn T-bone repeating on me but I had my second American Dream that night.
I was out riding Suzi, but not on the manse grounds, out on the open road, on the wrong side, buzzing along, when this big Harley cruised up beside me. The Fonz pulled down his aviator glasses and motioned for me to pull over.
I obeyed and he followed me into the hard shoulder where I got off and leaned Suzi on her stand. I went up to the Fonz who quite clearly didn't feel like getting off his Hog; instead he just sat there, cool as you like in his leather jacket, and turned the engine off.
'Hey!' the Fonz said and took his glasses off.
'Fonzie,' I said.
'How's things, amigo - as if I didn't know?' 'Lousy, Fonzie,' I said.
'Lucky you have the Fonz to talk to then, isn't it?'
'Yeah, Fonzie,' I said, keeping in mind that you have to keep saying 'Fonzie' like you'd say 'sir' to a superior officer, otherwise the Fonz can play rough.
'I've been thinking, about this Teresa chick - you can win her back.'
'How, Fonzie?'
'All you have to do is say sorry—' 'I've done that—'
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'Hey, always let the Fonz finish what he's saying!' 'OK, Fonzie.'
'What I was going to say was - say sorry some more. Then say sorry one more time like your little heart was going to break. The chicks love it.'
'You think that'll do the trick?' I said.
'Was I right or was I right the last time I gave you advice,' the Fonz said and crossed his arms.
'OK, I'll do it, Fonzie.'
'Hey,' said the Fonz and gunned the Hog into life. 'See you around, little guy.'
The Fonz blasted off up the highway on the right side of the road.
I followed when I got Suzi started.
Then the dream just upped and ended.
I awoke with it still fresh in my mind on that Monday morning. I didn't feel sick any more. I took on board what the Fonz had said. I would not give up on Teresa even if it meant begging.
After breakfast - those staple flapjacks and maple syrup - I asked Mom Horrowitz if I could phone Phil.
She said, 'Don't you want to phone your parents, Wil?'
'What?' I said.
'Your parents—'
'Oh, yeah. I suppose I should.'
Mom Horrowitz pointed at the phone. 'Well, go on.'
'I don't know what the time difference is? Ma'U kill me if I get her up out of bed.'
'It's OK. They're ahead of us by six hours,' she said.
'Right then.' I picked up the phone and with Mom Horrowitz standing looking on, dialled home.
Ma answered after five rings. 'Hello?'
I imagined her on the other end of the line, thousands of miles away, standing there in our hall in her apron.
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'Hi, Mom,' I said, and then corrected myself, 'Ma, I mean.'
'Wil, is that you?' Ma asked. 'You sound so different.' 'Tis.'
'Ah, how are you son?' 'Hanging together.'
'Why didn't you phone sooner? I've been worrying myself half to death. I told you to phone me when you landed - and that was last week.'
'I'm sorry. I got a bit carried away.'
'Well. I suppose that's understandable. So, how are things going?'
'OK Ma.'
'Good. How's the family you're staying with?' 'OK Ma.'
'And your host - Derry?' 'Everything's OK Ma.'
Ma started gerning her lamps out. 'You know, Wil, I miss you. Do you miss me?' 'Aye I do.'
Ma gathered herself. 'Phone me this weekend, Wil, yes? Now, could I speak to Mrs Horrowitz?'
'No problems. Ma,' I said and handed the phone over to Mom Horrowitz. I just caught my Ma's voice calling out 'Goodbye, son' from thousands of miles away. Never was I so glad of the distance between me and her.
I got to phone Phil after my Ma'd had a comforting natter with Mom Horrowitz.
'Yo, Wil,' Phil said when he got to the phone.
'Yo?'
Phil said, 'It's what Stacey-May says instead of hello.' 'OK. Yo. Wanna do something today?' 'Yeah, what?'
'Let's go the Brookfield Mall.'
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'Alright, dude!' Phil said.
Mom Kuntz (who Phil had nicknamed 'Spunky Kuntz') picked us up and took us to the ultimate experience in American leisure - The Mall.
When Derry first said the word to me I pictured some kind of wild
animal fight. You know like - maul, to be mauled by a wild animal, or like in the mauls and rucks of rugby. But nah. It was we what would call back in Ulster a 'shopping centre': a very very big shopping centre what with all the shops, an arcade, a bowling alley, and a cinema multiplex. And the only way you could get mauled in a Mall was to go there on Saturdays when the women go shopping.
Anyway, it was like dying and going to consumer heaven for someone like me. No kidding. You see, there was nothing like this in Ulster at that time. The PIRA had bombed the crap out of Belfast city centre and any other town worth mentioning. And you didn't go shopping at what big stores were left in case you were caught in another bomb-scare. That is, unless you were a woman, driven by those mothering genes to risk life and limb to gather up a few precious products.
First stop in heaven was of course, Arcadia. And wow, there were so many games, so many machines, it was hard to choose which one to spend my Da's dollars on.
Rather than waste precious cents learning something new, I chose my old favourite - Defender. It was great. I was good at it. I beat Phil and Derry easily, one after the other, but even on a two-win confidence-high I could not beat Helmut, the specky dickhead. Helmut was in short a Defender nerd. He slaughtered me. Such a trouncing was unacceptable to a fella like me who was brought up to win, to keep the enemy in their rightful lowly place so, of
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course, I demanded an explanation of his prowess. 'Where the fuck'd you learn to play like that?'
Helmut told me with a maddening shrug, 'This is where I hang out every weekend.'
So much for Social Darwinism. So much for eugenics. And don't even talk to me about survival of the fittest. Ah well, they say everybody's good at something, don't they? Fair play to him, ol' Helmut's probably a computer programmer at Microsoft these days.
After we'd done the arcade and toured the Mall, our next stop was the multiplex. All I can say to describe that is Zowee, dude. I mean like, you had a choice of movies to watch and huge buckets of buttered popcorn and big big bags of candy and mega-cokes and staff dressed like style-clowns who wished that you'd, 'Have a nice day.'
Aw, and there was a photo of the HoUywod sign up on the wall.
It didn't take long to make up our minds on what film/ movie to see. It had to be the biggie of the summer -Aliens - with your woman Sigourney Weaver.
I watched the Space Marines take on the Aliens and lose. I watched the Aliens lay their eggs inside the guts of the doomed Marines. I watched the eggs hatch and the Aliens explode out.
I thought about what it would be like to be one of those Marines, with an Alien gestating inside me . . .
'Wow, what'd you make of that?' said Phil as we left the credits scrolling away and came out of the darkness.
'I thought it was utterly cool,' Derry said. 'Especially the way the Aliens could spit acid.'
'Yeah,' added Helmut.
I was still lost in the thought, or should I say the memory, of the Aliens' self-administered Caesarian births.
'Wil?' Phil said to me.
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'It was the dog's bollocks,' I said, 'the way those Aliens burst out of them.'
And so we all agreed it was a great movie. It's part of the unwritten code for teenage boys that you all agree, so we were all very pleased that we'd been given an opportunity to do so. It's also part of this code - which I shouldn't be writing down - that you conduct a postmortem of a movie, in every gory detail. So we did - over big frothy Milwaukee Milkshakes.
By the time I'd finished noisily hoovering up the bubbles at the bottom of my cup I was getting bored of the gore-talk and got to thinking about the Fonz's advice and Teresa's phone number.
I left the others saying, 'I have to go to the bog.'
I had Teresa's number learnt off by heart. I hoped it'd be her that answered but it wasn't. Instead, it was Kelly the Taig.
'Could I speak to Teresa, please,' I said in my best false deep voice. 'Who's that?'
I couldn't say my own name so I said, 'It's Seamus.'
Kelly said, 'OK, I'll get her for you.'
I don't know why I said Seamus. In light of what happened between those two and me it was such a dumb thing to do. But I named myself Seamus and Seamus I was.
'Hello, Seamus, how are you?' Teresa. And she sounded so friendly I envied that Taigy bastard.
'Hiya,' I said in that deep voice which sounded nothing like Seamus at all.
'You sound like you've got the cold?'
'Aye,' I said, forgetting Taigs don't use 'Aye' all the time - the way Prods do to prove their Scottish descent. Aye - aye like fuck aye!
To which she replied, 'Who is this?'
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'Sure it's me, Seamus,' I said.
But she wasn't to be fooled. 'No, it's not. I know that voice. It's you, Wil, isn't it?'
I was set to say all my sorrys and then release the last sorrowful one like the wail of a banshee but the phone went dead so there was nothing for it but to go to the pissing bog like I said.
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15
Cowboys and Shamans
I didn't give up on Teresa. Derry gave up on me though, because the next day - a Family Tuesday - I phoned her, aw it must have been about ten times.
But no reply. She wasn't home, morning or afternoon.
I got to thinking - maybe if I thought about it hard enough - you know, really concentrated on saying sorry it would somehow get to her. Yeah, I was so desperate I resorted to telepathy instead of telephony. Can you believe I sat on the bed in the bedroom for an hour in the afternoon, with the curtains shut, and tried some serious remote influencing, action-at-a-distance type stuff? I even refused Derry's offer of another day with Debbie. But then, can you blame me?
I was in love. And first love is all melancholic mystification coupled with violent possessive urges. Make-believe in it and you can believe in magic. You can sympathetically see yourself as a shaman, flying high above the streets of Milwaukee seeking out your beloved, looking over her, casting a love-me-again spell on her. I know I did. I was that shaman flyer.
It was Rev Horrowitz who shot the demon lover in me down -
He came into the bedroom like an exorcist in a
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Stetson, threw open the curtains and wrecked my spell of lust.
'OK, Wil,' he pronounced. 'It's five. I've cleared some time. We're going out for that burger and some shooting.'
'At Rancheros?' I said. The primal ambition to eat prime steer burger and blast some targets took a hold of me. 'And the range - really?'
'Yep. Yeehaw. Get your hat on, son, and let's pony up.'
That day, behind the wheel of his van, the Rev was a cowboy driver. Yep, yeehaw, on the way to Rancheros he gave the bird to about ten different drivers. He was all, 'Fucking Ditwad!' this and, 'Fucking Dork!' that and, 'Why don't you learn how to fucking drive, you pissant?'
All this from a man of the cloth. It killed me. Derry too. You couldn't half see where Derry'd got the Hulk side of his personality from. And sitting in the back, wearing a couple of the Rev's old Stetsons we joined in the Rev's road rage and gave them ditwad fuckers the bird.
That in turn, just about killed the Rev. 'Amen, people,' the Rev said. 'Shouting, waving your arms about and gesturing a little is a great way to blow off steam.'
I don't think it was, though. I heard the Rev died of a stroke a couple years after that, but then maybe, understandably given what we did, there was just too much steam in him to blow off by then.
I'd almost forgotten about Teresa by the time we'd got to Rancheros. You want to have seen this place. It was like a cross between a butcher's and a burger joint. They had all these skinned steer carcasses hanging in their windows and behind their counter. And then there was this huge fat guy, half butcher, half baker, there to serve you saying: 'What'U you folks have?'
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'Burgers,' said Rev Horrowitz to the fat guy. 'All you have to do is point, Wil.' 'And then what?' I said.
So what else was there for it? I did what I was told, even though it felt weird pointing at the cow's arse and knowing I was going to eat it. 'Where the legs meet the back-end, you know like?'
Looking every bit like modern day cowboys, the Rev and Derry pointed to spots kind of around the same area.
'Rare?' the huge fat guy asked me.
'Nah, well done,' I said remembering Mom Horro-witz's T-bone none too fondly.
The Rev and Derry ordered theirs served up red rare.
While the huge fat guy picked up a knife and weighed into the carcass, we sat down at this big ol' pine picnic-type table.
I felt I had to ask, 'What's the point in picking your own spot. Pops?'
'Here you get to know what you're eating, son,' the Rev said. 'In places like McDonalds and Burger King they serve you up all the minced scraps - you know like the eyelids, the ears, the chops, the cock and balls.'
'Oh,' I said, and suddenly my appetite for burgers just wasn't the same as it had been.
'Oh.' That's what I said. And my appetite for destruction and over-consumption lessened. It was a matter of taste though, not of decency. See, if I'd been brought up decent - educated to know the value of every living thing in Mother Nature - the obscenity of Rancheros might have occurred to me. Who knows? I might even have been
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capable of compassionate thoughts towards all living animals, Taigs included.
I mean, for example, a shaman wouldn't have painted burgers on the walls of his cave, would he? Nah, that ol' horned and cloven-hooved shaman, he painted animals, the images of animals, so that he might gain power over that animal in the hunt the next day. I mean in the beginning man had to hunt down and kill his own food. And way back then if a hunter got lucky he respected his prey by offering up thanks to the animal's spirit and Mother Nature.
That couldn't be more removed from what I experienced at Rancheros. Gone are the days when you'd have to kill and to hack apart your own kill; machines and a few desensitised butchers do it for you. Gone are the days when we see animals as beings or, if you prefer, spirits, with experiences of their own. Gone are the days we thank Mother Nature for our kills - instead we believe that it's all rightfully ours for the taking. We are man, the prime predatorial species on earth. Nothing can stop us when we are made by our leaders to act together as a group.
Simon Kerr Page 6