by Graham Jones
8
I remember a sign the council made when they first started housin us and which my fourteen year old runners stumbled across lyin abandoned in the muddy field under a grey, pushy sky. Travellers will enter this housin estate, it said, on the understandin they are agreeable to undergo a process of familiarisation in settled circumstances as a transitional stage to qualify for a Local Authority dwellin in the normal way. Yeeuch. I sneered down at the words, because more and more of my family were moving over there. Susan, Dearbhla, Jimmy, Eoghan and Mick had all done so in the last year. Each claimed it made them awful lonely for the camp. That's what happens. House us and we pine. Even steppin inside a council house could be frightenin. After all, most people who live in houses settle there forever - while to us the thought of not movin again is like dyin.
Even now, years later, most of my relatives will invariably wander over here to the camp at some point durin the day. On the camp there's always plenty of other people. In a house you're by yourselves. No comparison. It's funny, though, because many young ones who were born and reared in the houses still end up in caravans after marriage as there never seems to be a house available when they go out on their own. The kids see returnin to a caravan as a kind of setback, but it allows us keep our tradition alive. I mean, they're hardly goin to sponge off their own parents. Many, like Tony and Suzanne, set up in the driveway. Some come back here to the camp. I suppose more and more will be housed. Not me, though.
I performed a muddy, midday two-step on the sign. Then legged home in my denim shorts and stringy blue top because we were due to cram into Jim's van and hit The National Romany Caravan Parade. Someone from our camp or Berr's Villa usually won, even though we weren't Romany, so we always made sure to turn up in plenty of time. Down the years ourselves and scores of cousins and second cousins and third cousins would park our caravans along the edge of the road and you just knew a wonderful time would be had by all. A lot of business, to be sure, but also a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Fairs and markets were still held properly when I was in my early teens. Yet things I was told about when my granny was tryin to get me and my sisters to sleep years earlier were hard to imagine happenin anymore. The big fightin between different groups of travellers, for instance. That was something I never saw with my own eyes. It was only fightin between two lads I encountered. Sometimes a few more would get drawn in, but there were no armies left. The settled people thought we were one big nomad army, of course.
Havin long since given up on Michael and gettin close to marryin age, I found anticipatin The National Romany Caravan Parade that year particularly excitin. It made me feel alive because who knew what fella might take a likin to me, or me to him. Admittedly, a lot of babies were conceived after parades or fairs and soon weddins planned in accordance - although nothing like that would have occurred in my case because I was a very good girl. I never would have done something like that to my parents.
For all the flirtin and preenin Steph and myself did at the parade that day when I was fourteen, no connection with a boy seemed likely to endure when it was past midnight and time to drive home. I was only mildly amused to discover that Michael was catchin a ride back with us. Nor did he really acknowledge me in his jeans and runners and bare torso. I remember my supposedly unfascinated eyes movin slowly over the tattoos that covered his back. Christ on the cross, an angel floatin to the left and grim reaper on the right. Beneath it all, sun risin over an ocean and the words Destination Unknown. I looked away as we all drove silently home. It just didn't feel like he looked away.
All I really knew about him was that he liked video games. That he tried to fit in with everyone else, but didn't. Had long since lost any interest in football, which the other lads were only becomin more addicted to. Had shown little of his family's love for boxin and was known to become mildly irritable when his cousins tried to rope him into shenanigans. He was quick, though. Very quickly mastered things. Then immediately lost interest. There was talk it all stemmed from the suicide of his father. I knew all this without even knowin much about him.
That night in the van Michael began tellin the other lads he was goin to be playin videogames in his trailer by Christmas. None of them believed him because in our world videogames remained huge, bulky, expensive things you wouldn't find anywhere but arcades. Hulks the lads would have needed a van to move. Yet one day shortly afterwards he showed Steph a page in a magazine depictin a family sittin around their television. They weren't watchin television, though. They were grippin joysticks from which wires lead to a box on the carpet. On the screen, a version of Space Invaders.
Yet even though he showed us the magazine and swore up and down that by Christmas he would have one of the prized boxes himself - and that we could all take respectful turns - it never happened that year. He claimed there was some problem with supply and demand. A shortage of microprocessors or something. Nobody believed him except me. Actually, it was true. Videogames were missin underneath many trees that Christmas.
Michael eventually purchased the Volcabox RCS and I never saw him so happy. By that point we were fifteen and had developed a renewed interest in one another from afar. I remember the day he came back with it, his lettin me try the joystick outdoors. Tellin me it was much more sensitive than the joysticks of years past. Before long, cartridges linin the wall of his family's caravan were visible through the window as were posters, cards, dolls, magazines with cheat codes on the back pages and all that crap. He gained some respect from the other lads, who were deep into buyin and sellin by then, from hawkin copies of Volcabox games to the kids in Col?iste Iosaef. As you may or may not know, Volcabox games were stored on cassette tape. He had to borrow his cousin Seamus' stereo, run a jack lead to his own and ensure the recordin levels were just right to produce copies that wouldn't crash. Remember he told me all this in the hope I would be impressed. I was, to be honest, if not by what he was sayin.
The boy I fancied was into every kind of videogame you could imagine. He loved the action titles in all their emptiness - they didn't seem action packed to me - and the fightin games which struck me as ridiculous compared to bareknuckle. He was curious about adventure and puzzle games, for which you used your mind, not just your gut. Strategy games. Simulations. Wasn't mad about sports games, now that I think back on it. Once his cousin William had a football videogame and I remember Michael had little or no interest.
It was gettin to the point where he didn't sleep much and the men in his family often complained he was useless durin the day. They insisted sleep deprivation lead him to lose a centimetre of his right index finger while cuttin roof lungs for Sean O'Donoghue with a buzzsaw in the industrial estate. His fatigue was due partly to a knack for twitch games. His favourite bein twitch games that were also fightin games. You remember I said he was descended from the King? His grandfather and father, although they never pursued the title, were every bit as good. Michael could have been too. Apparently he would rather fiddle with a joystick. His favourite twitch game was called Tend Pray Kung Fu. I remember in those days the fightin games were 2D and seem corny compared to what exists now. Nor was there much of a story.
Michael once claimed - in a flash of juvenile philosophy - that settled people had one life, travellers had two and heroes in videogames three.
I remember the lads would be outside playin football while he was inside playin Mario or Donkey Kong. Sometimes they played with him, but not as much as you might imagine. They didn't huddle together the way I think settled kids did. Michael was seen as a bit obsessed. He dreamt about videogames. Once even stayin awake for three days - two nights in a row - continuously playin Bargain Ben. Initially everyone was disgusted, though by the second night he was the seventh son of a seventh son. A theory that collapsed if you went back one generation. His round, wayward auntie Collette given the questionable job of removin milk bottles of urine until she informed everyone he had collapsed hand around stick.
As a result, I never really saw Michael. He was either work
in with his uncles, wastin money in the arcade or shut away inside his caravan chasin a higher score. It made me all the more curious. This guy wasn't like the others. He didn't slouch around the camp, thinkin and schemin. When I once visited the arcade in town with his brother to tell him his uncle Frankie had died and to come home quick - because I was the only one who realised where the arcade was - I was intrigued by the place.
I remember it bein full of settled boys his age. You could smell them. Boys becomin men. Although I saw a few pinball machines, which I kind of understood, the place was mostly just videogames. Wall to wall. Some of the games made out of dots, others with lines. No girls anywhere to be seen and I remember wonderin where the girl's machines were? An awful lot of chewin gum on the floor. Can't say I liked it. We eventually found him transfixed by something called Time Crisis.
Watchin him standin there, foot on pedal, indistinguishable from all the settled kids, a tear slowly formed in my eye. His hands were convincin the joystick with a love he had never shown for horses and I just didn't see the point of it all. They were like all those old paperback classics I had read since leavin school. Other worlds. Other lives. You died and started all over again.
Perhaps my disinterest had something to do with the fact that Michael's games were just not for girls. I mean, there weren't any girls in them. Other than the occasional damsel in distress. The games were all about fightin or searchin around - that was what men did.
It wasn't that I couldn't like video games. It was the type of videogames that existed. I had assumed there were many different types. That Michael just didn't pick very good ones. That day I realised the whole world was playin the one fuckin game and it scared me.
Defender. Donkey Kong. Robotron. Tempest. I think he liked seein his name on the scoreboard at the end. That it made him feel special. His name was all he could write, though and he couldn't read.
That was where I came in.
He knew I'd been to school and was supposedly a genius when it came to readin and writin. I was always walkin around with some old book which looked really contrived in our camp.
Late one night, dogs barkin and the trucks in heat, I passed his trailer and he called my name.
I could hear really simple music, composed with eight bars.
Remember doin a little circle because it wasn't possible to see him.
'What?' I eventually shouted.
'Come here a minute,' he muttered.
'No,' I replied. 'My ma'll kill me.'
There was some noise and then he appeared at his door.
'What is it?' I scowled.
He grinned at me for a moment and then, with motor movement of an obsessive, produced Johnny Blues from his back pocket and offered one to me.
I shook my head.
'I'm tryin to play an adventure game,' he said while lightin up. 'It's all words, though - can't get past the openin tune.'
'So what?' I asked.
'Will you have a look?' he blew smoke out into the night.
TO START, TYPE GO
GO
WELCOME TO THE MAP OF FURGAMIA! ONE OF THE FINEST ADVENTURE GAMES
AVAILABLE FOR THE VOLCABOX RCS. YOU MUST TRAIPSE THROUGH THE
KINGDOM OF FURGAMIA IN THE HOPE OF FINDING THE SECRET PARCHMENTS
AND THUS LIBERATING PRINCESS VIOLET FROM THE EVIL KING CRAMMY.
TO GO NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST HIT KEYS N, S, E, W
TRY COMMANDS GET, DROP, GO, LOOK, READ, CLIMB, MOVE, HIT, KILL
YOU ARE NEAR AN OLD RUIN. YOU CAN SEE STEPS AND A TREE NEARBY. ENTER COMMAND.
CLIMB TREE.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN. ENTER COMMAND.
GO TREE.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN. ENTER COMMAND.
GO STEPS.
YOU ARE AT THE FRONT DOOR OF THE RUIN. ENTER COMMAND.
Although I hated the music, the game seemed more fun than all the others because there was a story. I liked stories. They were important in the camp. Right up there with food and warmth and love. A type of glue that held us all together. This particular one seemed like a myth. After half an hour I loosened up and we were there all night, while everybody else in the camp was asleep. Had my mother known I wasn't in bed she would have been runnin all over Longcommon lookin for me.
'Fuckin paralysed because I can't read,' Michael murmured just before the sun rose. 'You're so smart.'
'Am not,' I shook my head, without takin it off the screen. 'I haven't learned anything from readin.'
'No,' he shook his head. 'You have a clever way of sayin things - it must be the books.'
There was silence.
'Did you really burn down the school?' he asked.
I looked at him.
He was handsome in the marble light of the screen.
It's hard to admit this, but chattin away in that caravan as light started pourin through the windows, it really felt like I had found my man.
When people gossiped about us after that night it didn't bother me because I thought Michael felt the same way.
Two days later himself and his uncle Francie drove back into the camp in high spirits. Standin tied on the truck was a coin slot arcade game called Marvel Superheroes. It was almost completely gutted - there was no way it would ever work - but that didn't stop Michael from tryin to revive it. For weeks he could be found under its hood. I kept worryin whether it would electrocute him. Not if it isn't turned on, was his reassurance. Once I handed him a screwdriver. Every now and then he would stand up and switch on the extension leadin to his families' genie, though no lights ever danced on the screen. You could tell by the way he cared for it, the way he stared at it for five minutes while suckin on a Johnny Blue every mornin before crawlin inside, Michael thought that Marvel Superheroes machine was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He spent a while tryin to convince Francie they should get involved in the videogame business. Probably because Francie's da had once sold a truck of second hand bar stools to a pub in Longford. But Francie didn't see how it would work. They had only managed to pick up Marvel Superheroes because it had been retired. Had pulled it from a skip. No functionin or fixable arcade games were goin to fall into their hands. They were simply too expensive. Or so we all thought.
Michael went and talked to his cousin James' father, who was rich and had once sold two crane games to a pinball emporium in Derry. He tried to sell him on the whole idea of these new videogames. I think initially he was suggestin to James' father - Jimmy - that it would be great to open an arcade ourselves. Tellin Jimmy how the walls of arcades were painted black to hypnotise lads into focusin on the screens and forgettin about the world outside. We'd just put down waxy on the floor, he shrugged. Explained videogames were the biggest thing since television. That kids were goin mad for them. That a fortune was bein made and we should get in on the fuckin act. That we would basically be dealin with cabinets and a coin slot that people kept feedin with money. Money you could hear every time a coin dropped because it landed on top of other coins. Almost like the old gladar box, Michael added.
Michael's cousins used to be called coiners because of the gladar box. It was a small cube, with the impression of a coin on either side, that was introduced to certain families at rural kitchen tables years ago. A small hole lead inside. A hole the unfortunate victim studied as Michael's cousins melted solder in a ladle. Just before they poured, however, they would ask the spectator for water to cool the prize. While the countryman's back was turned, Michael's cousins would drop a real coin into the mold and pour metal into the hole. When the box was opened a hot piece of currency rolled out.
There were two reasons Jimmy was meant to have been disinterested. Firstly, he wasn't charmed by videogames. Second, he thought it was a risky business venture. He thought almost everything was risky, mind you. Like all good businessmen, he knew the importance of sayin no and would do so about eleven or twelve times a day. Leave the games for farmers, my auntie Winona claimed he used to
reply whenever Michael made his latest pitch. What it really indicated, I think, was that Jimmy didn't want to engage too much with settled people. Your basic sale was fine. It had a beginnin, middle and end. Actually runnin an arcade would have meant havin customers who could oblige you and few travellers lust after that.
Jimmy was mainly interested in dumps. Scrap metal merchants. PVC. Tree toppin. Buyin and sellin. That was business. Connin the buffer. Even loans among the family. At the same time, Jimmy knew there was very little buyin and sellin left to do. Used to be you could offer people a real bargain. But nowadays it seemed the big stores would give them bargains quicker. Might even give them more of a bargain. In the old days a livingroom suite might be a grand. These days you opened up the paper and saw it for IR?499. More and more of the lads were workin in factories. Thankfully they had not yet gotten into drugs.
Our camp is full of drugs now. Quite a few lads have died too. A sixteen year old died from Ecstasy last year. Got a bad tab. They also die from heroin. These days it's mostly cocaine, though. We don't associate with them. Don't want them around our place. Drugs are seen as disgraceful here. A shame among the family. Yet it's after hittin the travellin community really badly in the last ten years. It's something that's becomin normal among young fellas. Skunk too. Seems everyone smokes skunk. To say nothing of who sells what. That's the real epidemic.
Back then, though, drugs weren't a big thing in our world and Jimmy was castin around for other options. Still, I don't think he would have gone for the videogame idea if Michael's father hadn't killed himself fours years earlier. Partly out of sympathy, Jimmy acted like he was intrigued by the way the cabinets produced money out of thin air and agreed to have a closer look. Albeit only at the possibility of sellin second hand cabinets to a small arcade in Dundalk.
The deal threatened to go sour when Jimmy and Michael discovered half the games they had paid a measly price for didn't work. Remember they spent hours devastated by the money they had lost. However, in his sorrow Michael finally managed to get them functionin. It seemed the two player option worked fine and if Michael played with four hands he could make it happen. Still no good - because the Dundalk buyer had already warned he would test every single unit.
That night the lads hatched a plan to train five boys around the age of six to play the game without seein the screen, hide one inside each dud cabinet and actually have them play against the buyer durin testin!
I wasn't there on the day, so don't know how the little lads escaped to freedom, but believe with every fibre of my bein the deal was successful and they got the cash because Michael gave me a small silver-plated bracelet the followin day.
After that Jimmy really did start buyin and sellin second hand cabinets. Ones that worked. There were so many different units, so many imitations of other games. New stuff comin through the camp every six months. Michael explained to my eager ears that for many years it had seemed slower. A cabinet would be the bees knees for two or three summers at least. After all, they were video games! Yet now the hulks were replaced every six months. A machine some arcade in Dublin was finished with would promptly become the holy grail to a snooker hall in Lisdoonvarna. I remember one time the lads rollin out of the site with twenty cabinets under the plastic on the back of the truck. Happy days.
What Jimmy disliked was that once he had sold units to a proprietor it was over. If you looked closely, you could see an awful tragedy play itself out in the hills of his face after each sale concluded beside his trailer. He wanted to be emptyin the coins when the catchbox was full. He would have loved if there was some way to arrange that. Of course, there wasn't. It was always just straightforward, once-off cash sales. Thank God.
Once they sold a cabinet that was workin perfectly but had a damaged shell by makin a beautiful tin body from scratch. Measurin it up themselves and leavin holes for the buttons and joysticks to sprout. Sometimes, before sellin, they would test them. Which meant they were rigged up outside the trailers, beside the genies. I made up my mind that I disliked them. They were for boys. The only one I ever saw for girls was the stupidest thing in the world. Think it was called Ms. Pacman.
Jimmy himself never bothered playin the games. Like a dealer never injects. The man probably never stepped inside an arcade. Certainly never owned one. But he did become the blackmarket supplier of arcade cabinets in Ireland for just under three years. He lost an awful lot of money.
Deep down, there was just something about those 2D games I found scary. Almost hauntin. Yet I tolerated them. What could I say? I was just a girl. Michael's girl, I assumed. Who comforted herself by guessin the reason he liked platform games with levels and clouds and tunnels, was that he was a traveller. Still, I hated the way each level looked like the last, with a few little differences. Like a settled person's way of lookin at life. You think you have it down pat and so nothing ever surprises.
However, one Saturday morning after Michael had been away for a fortnight with his other uncle Maurice I walked into his trailer and found him playin a new game that I hadn't seen before. It was 3D. The moment I saw the screen, which allowed Michael to actually move around in some desolate area near the sea, my heart sank. The graphics were poor - especially compared to what they are nowadays - but the fact that he could really move, without really movin, terrified me. I actually had nightmares after that. Despised that kind of defrosted freedom, which he didn't need to move off his ass to experience. Smelt death when he played and not because the game was violent or idle - because it was so meaningless.
My parents were delighted with the bracelet he had given me and wanted to know when we were gettin married. I explained he hadn't asked and eyebrows were raised. At the same time, Michael was known as different and why would he buy me a beautiful bracelet if he wasn't honourable?
I secretly began to worry that maybe it was because he felt obliged to do so. Began to sense he didn't really want me. After all, if he wanted me, why didn't he kiss me more often?
I was the only one who realised he was leavin, which is not to say he told me.
Everyone else seemed unfettered by his takin a trip, assumed he would return and limited their goodbyes accordingly. Travellers are always comin and goin and all the men had temporarily disappeared at some point over the years - only to promptly reappear when they became hungry or lonely. It wasn't until a few months later that people startin wonderin where he was and I was pressed for information I didn't have. That was when it started to become an issue. Michael was not around and he wasn't at another camp and he wasn't stayin with settled travellers and - as a matter of fact - nobody knew for sure just where the hell he was. Yet, despite this chatter, it still didn't really settle in for almost a year. About ten and a half months to be precise. When his uncle-in-law Roy Maughan died and Michael didn't come to the funeral.
Roy Maughan was a huge Roy Rogers fan. He was known as Roy Rogers Maughan. He was the same height as Rogers, just under five foot eleven. Used to stand like him. Wear the same jacket. He adored all the movies. Had a beautiful casket pulled by horse drawn carriage and his family hired three limousines for themselves. The man had fifteen children and obviously they all had their own kids too. The service was in Chick Church and the burial in Longcommon Cemetery. A very emotional time around here. It was a big church but nowhere near big enough for the crowd of people who showed up, the bulk of whom were left standin outside. He was an old enough man and knew everyone. People came from Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast. All over Ireland. Connemara. There were people at the funeral involved in a bitter dispute with one another - but they relaxed for Roy Rogers Maughan's send off. That's usually the case. It's very rare you hear of traveller funeral assassinations. Though it does happen.
His grave was beautiful. It took up two plots. A black marble floor and fine metal railins. On the headstone a picture of himself beside a picture of Roy Rogers! Packed with hearts and flowers and the like. His wife would visit his grave every single day for the rest of her
life. Maintainin and payin for it forever. We used to burn the caravan in the old days and I still believe that was better. It helped you grieve. Much too painful to still be walkin in and out. We also used to burn the belongins of the person who died and that's something that has continued. I suppose it's just a way of showin respect. We don't burn absolutely everything. It's obviously nice to hold onto a keepsake of some kind.
At Roy's funeral his relatives expressed their grief very openly. Screamin and roarin and even jumpin into the grave in the case of Bobble Maughan. There was an awful lot of closin and re-openin the coffin - much touchin and kissin of Roy - until the priest had to warn about shiftin weather.
When Roy's funeral came and went without Michael manifestin, people began to realise that he was really gone. Whenever we thought back to that funeral we fancied it was just as much a farewell to him. Like on the ninth day, when the soul leaves the body? Or durin months masses, the masses said every month for a year at the graveside. Not to mention one year later, at the blessin of the cross, for which people travelled far and wide all over again. That was every bit as emotional as the funeral, though for myself and Bernadette not because we were thinkin about Roy Rogers Maughan.
It was a very sad time for me because I realised my man wasn't comin back. That he wasn't my man after all. I don't know if people readin this will understand, but reputation is extremely important in the travellin community. The fact that Michael and I had done little more than kiss wasn't important. That our love story was virtually a figment of my imagination. It was a figment of everyone else's imagination too and nobody was ever goin to touch me. Not even the ones who sensed I was a virgin. I was dirty. That was it. God payin me back for burnin down the school.