American Skin

by Ken Bruen

  “Well, I will so, may I have a red wine?”

  Ordered that and a large Jameson, water back. Passed over a twenty euro note and got Dixie in change. See how I’ve meshed those Americanisms in there. Now if I could only just goddam “walk the walk.” I touched my glass to hers, said,

  “Slainte.”

  Mangled it as best I could and got a radiant smile, all lightness. She said,

  “Lovely pronunciation.”

  Signed, sealed and near delivered. I knocked back the whiskey, said,

  “If I’m asleep when they serve dinner, don’t wake me.”

  She took a sip of the wine, said,

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  I closed my eyes, was gone, it seemed but a moment. Put it down to the Vicodin but I had a dream of such reality, it was like truth. More like a total recollection. The night I met Siobhan, I’d been on a real downer. Tommy was acting the bollocks as usual, drinking his face off, making a nuisance of himself, and generally getting on my nerves. I’d been feeling sorry for myself, the constant Galway rain was showing no sign of letup, we’d had two weeks of incessant downpour. The adjective “teeming” was designed for our climate. It lashed down, relentless, soaking you through, why we drank so much whiskey, and because we liked the stuff. My life seemed to have hit a cul-de-sac and no signpost on the horizon. Tommy had said,

  “Let’s go to a dance.”

  Yeah, right.

  Just what I needed, a frigging ballroom. Surly Irish men herded one side, glaring at the women as if they hated them. To hear the women tell it, they did. It was a throwback to the old days, when our parents had no other diversion but the one Saturday night outing. We were spoilt for choice, the new Ireland of clubs, money, endless credit. The showbands had been the staple of the sixties, six to eight guys, blazers, white pants, bad hairpieces and worse music, usually covers of Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Beach Boys. My father had explained,

  “We danced our way through poverty.”

  It was meant to be a form of irony that there’d been a revival. The showbands were enjoying a renaissance, and Ecstasy had sure given us a thirst of dancing and late night revels. Young people wore suits and the women, what my mother used to call frocks. Fifties hairdoes that seemed to match the frocks and the guys, with the dark suits and gel in the hair. The only thing that didn’t change was the bands, younger maybe and atrocious. Part of the irony. Who was the joke on when you pay to hear bad music?

  Music is the passion of my life. Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Tom Russell, Gretchen Peters, to name but the first line of my favourites. And at a reach, the Beach Boys. Our parents had snuck flasks of Jameson into the ballrooms. Our generation, cool and poised, because of the E, had a ferocious demand for bottled water. Tommy being the exception, he had a flask, not because of tradition but out of need. The band, all in their twenties, was murdering “Tell Laura I Love Her.” I was hating every moment when Tommy sidled up to me, offered the flask, asked,

  “Wanna hit?”

  The lead vocalist had announced,

  “Ladies’ choice.”

  I knew from my father that this was the Irish male’s nightmare. This was when you were glad you’d fortified the flask with double measures.

  Tommy slunk off to score some dope — not a woman, the weed. I was looking at my watch, as if I had a pressing engagement. You’re in a dance hall and you have a pressing appointment?

  Who was I kidding?

  The alternative was to watch the women give you that ice-cool appraisal and find you wanting. I was regretting not taking a shot of the Jameson, a big shot when I heard,

  “Like to dance?”

  I didn’t answer, more out of surprise than rudeness though that was part of it. I’d my granite face on, the one that says,

  “Hey, you don’t wanna dance with me . . . like I give a shit?”

  I turned and there was the caricature Irish colleen, straight from central casting. No fooling, like an understudy for Maureen O’Hara. Red hair, wild and untamed, fresh complexion that screamed health. A small build, though finely shaped, very fine. Her face wasn’t pretty, all the right features in place but something just missed making it so. What it was, was compelling, due to the vivacity of her eyes. I’m Irish, I’ve seen blue eyes all my life but here, here was blue like a kick in the gut. She smiled and I was lost, and delivered. She repeated,

  “Wanna dance?”

  And Mr/ Smooth, Mr/ Silver Tongued devil, said,

  “Me?”

  Irish women have great strength, and I was to see the very first show of it as she took my arm, said,

  “The song will be over if you stand there debating.”

  And I smelled her perfume, like all the clichés, it enveloped me. I walked on her feet, like twice and she said,

  “We’re going to have to show you a few steps, fellah.”

  Of all the things she’d say to me, none would quite have the resonance of that. The promise of a future implied. Control, reserve, lock down, these are the qualities or liabilities I’ve strived for. All out the damn window even before I knew her name. I loved her right then and if the love deepened as it did and did, there were few moments to equal the dizzying exhileration of falling completely and utterly. Next song up was Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley’s “Whiskey Lullaby.” I know, it’s pure schmaltz, pap as the Brits say, but never, and I mean never did I relish a song so much. She moved in close, put her hands round my waist, and I must have given a slight tremor as she said,

  “Me too, that song speaks to me.”

  The song ended and I asked if she’d like a drink and she went,

  “I’m parched.”

  I got the drinks and we sat on the balcony, I asked,

  “What’s your name?”

  “Siobhan Keane and you’re Stephen Blake, I know all belong to you.”

  Doesn’t get more Irish than that.

  The next dance was fast and we watched the couples jiving. Americans, when they hear this, ask, what?

  “They’re talking like black people? And why?”

  No, they’re dancing, it’s our version of swing. And the women are experts, the guys are mainly terrified and truly, for once, are along for the ride. You want to observe a terrified Irishman, see his face as he goes into the first swing of the routine. Like all real macho men, I can’t dance. Never mind the Micheal Flatley hype, he’s Irish American, anyway, the way we tell it, only homosexuals can dance.

  You’d believe we’re kidding when we say this.

  We’re not.

  My mother was a hell of a dancer and my father, he could fake it, a bit, sufficient for the odd wedding or wake, but you could never accuse him of enjoying it. Siobhan asked,

  “You don’t, I suppose, want to try that?”

  Before I could shake my head, she asked,

  “So, are you going to ask me out or just sit there, work on your hard man expression?”

  That’s how we began. It was even better than I anticipated. She made me feel like a man I’d want to be. I always wished I could have been the guy she thought I was. She was certainly the woman I loved being with. Unlike the current rituals, we didn’t hop into bed straightaway. She said,

  “I want to wait.”

  Fine by me as I was nervous, for the first time in my life, it mattered to me that it be special. Truth, too, I was afraid I’d disappoint her.

  Gradually, I learned about her family. Her old man was a bad bastard. Drunk and vicious with it. He started out mean and the booze just fine-lined it. I never really got the full impact of the description surly till I met him. Siobhan had deferred for ages bringing me to her home. I’d rag her,

  “What? You’re ashamed of me?”

  Then saw her face, the despair, the hurt and she said,

  “No, I’m ashamed of them.”

  You never hear that in Ireland. No matter how bad the situation, the unit of family gets defended even when the evidence is in full sight. For her to say this cost h
er in ways even I didn’t full realise. Trying for levity, which was among my more blind moments, I said,

  “Jesus, how bad can they be?”

  Her forehead furrowed in concentration, she went,

  “The worst, and don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  She told me of her brother, in jail for burglary, her sister with two kids before she was nineteen, a mother on pills. Or on tablets, as she put it. You don’t hear that anymore, tablets, like something Moses bequeathed. My own mother was known to suffer from nerves. This was said with an almost imperceptible wink. Translate as drink.

  Siobhan’s wrath, and fiery it was, was reserved for her father. Her face literally curled in on itself, her eyes like murder, her mouth, tight and compressed as she recounted the beatings, the poverty, the sheer calculated cruelty of the man. I loved my own father and was at a loss to grasp that some men are just born bad and enjoy it.

  Siobhan’s mantra was money . . . you have money, you get out. She had no hang-up about where it came from, she worked in a bank and often said,

  “Money has no conscience.”

  When I finally met her family, they were marginally worse than she’d described. They lived in what is laughingly referred to as genteel poverty. Trust me, there is nothing fucking genteel about being poor. In Ireland, translate as, they had nothing but they were clean. The house was part of a terrace, you could hear the people next door and they were loud. Not as loud as Siobhan’s father.

  From all she’d said, I anticipated a large, burly guy. He was a small shite, small in every sense, especially his actions. Met us at the door, dressed in unironed pants of a suit, an open-necked shirt that showed grey hair spouting at the throat. His hair was in deep recession, like the economy, and he had the eyes of a ferret, a can of beer in his hand, his greeting was,

  “Lady Muck deigned to visit.”

  She stared at him for a moment then said,

  “Thanks for dressing up, Dad.”

  He gave a laugh that had no relation to warmth or humour, went,

  “Dress up, for your fancy man? Who have we this time, another merchant banker?”

  And he laughed at his term, like we might not get the reference to what it rhymed with. I put out my hand and he looked at it as if I’d asked him for a fiver, said,

  “You know where you can stick that.”

  That was the high point of the evening. We stayed all of twenty minutes, Siobhan’s mother was in the front room, hugging her knees, she had the eyes of someone who got a terrible fright and never recovered. The conversation consisted of sneers from her dad, tiny whimpers from the mother. As we got up to leave, I noticed Siobhan slip some money to her mother who took it like salvation. Her father stood at the door with me, asked,

  “You getting some?”

  Took me a moment to grasp his implication then I turned, whispered,

  “Some day, maybe we’ll meet down the town, just you and me, I’ll let you have some.”

  Like all bullies, he fell back on whining, said to the women,

  “This piss head threatened me.”

  Siobhan was already moving to get away and I said to him,

  “That wasn’t a threat, that was a promise.”

  We were more than half way down the street when Siobhan said,

  “Promise me you’ll get me out of here.”

  I promised, having no idea how I’d accomplish that but it didn’t seem the time to mention it.

  JOHN A. STAPLETON

  STAPLETON was built to last though the odds were against him. Brought up in Belfast in the real bad dark years, he saw his father murdered by the British army. He took to the streets early, dodging rubber bullets and worse. He displayed a natural talent for guerrilla tactics. The Falls road taught him all he ever needed to know about survival. The Boyos spotted his potential and he was carrying an Arma-Lite by the time he was fourteen. They sent him to south Armagh, bandit country, and for three years he harassed, terrorised, and laid down hell for the hapless squaddies assigned to that god forsaken territory.

  He was commander of his own unit at the age of nineteen and seemed blessed by some deity to always evade capture. He regularly made the British army’s top ten most wanted. Not all the touts, informers, or supergrasses could deliver him.

  It was rumoured that his skills were fine-honed in the training camps of south Lebanon.

  He was fuelled by a total hatred of all things English. Of short stature, he was wiry and began to attend gyms to build up muscle. Physical fitness was his passion and the key to his survival. Even his own mother said,

  “God, he’s an ugly child.”

  And he was, growing into an even uglier adult. He utilised that, letting his face intimidate people. A scar ran across his forehead, from the late detonation of a device in the centre of Derry. He’d never call it Londonderry. His nose had been broken more times than he could remember, due to literal in-fighting, up close and personal, the way he liked it. His street fighting was learned from the days of the Falls and consisted of fierce brutality combined with a speed that was near graceful in its execution. Face to face with some young soldier from the streets of Manchester, he liked nothing better than to drop his weapon, open his left palm and goad,

  “Come on sissy boy.”

  He kept his head shaven and that, with his dark eyes, ruined features, made his opponents pause for that deadly second. All he needed.

  The Peace Talks were like the worst news. He never wanted the hostilities to end, they were part of his very blood. He had joined a breakaway faction who continued to rob banks and cause mayhem. But he had been planning a heist down South for some time and just needed the right patsy. He wanted this on many levels. The attitude in the Republic towards the North pissed him off big-time. As if the situation didn’t really concern them. When they got prosperous with the Celtic Tiger, they got even more arrogant. At least in his opinion. Sure, they had their poxy government bleating about Peace but you looked behind the earnest camera smiles and deep concern, you saw that they couldn’t give a toss for the North. He’d make them care. Hit the fucks where it now mattered . . . in the wallet. Take down their banks, they’d notice. To add insult to injury, he wanted a Southerner involved and then he’d off the prick. From time to time, he’d lain low in Dublin and saw the response when his accent was aired. A slight hesitation, then the platitudes. What they wanted was for the North to fuck the hell off and stop bothering them. They had a world stage to Riverdance and didn’t want it messed up with notions like freedom.

  He’d conducted his own mini survey. Asked a selection of them to recite the Proclaimation of 1916 — not one bastard could. He was horrified, he could recite it in English and Irish. Nobody cared about the revival of the language, sure they had a TV channel catering to the native tongue but who watched it? The young kids were watching The O.C. . . . The Simpsons . . . Fear Factor.

  He’d give them Fear Factor, all right. Try finding a pub with traditional music. Fuck no, all you got were U2 rip-off’s. He’d nothing against U2, in fact he felt, “Where the Streets Have No Name” was one of the best songs ever about the conflict and Belfast in particular. The only Republican group worth the name, The Wolfe Tones, had broken up, didn’t that say it all? He’d come of age in the sheebeens of Belfast, the illegal pubs in the no-go areas where night after night you got “The Men Behind the Wire,” “The Ballad of Bobby Sands,” “Brits Out,” “This Land is Your Land,” real songs. With the bodhrans, spoons, accordions, Uilleann pipes, all blasting at mega warp.

  Jesus, he’d been in a pub on Gardiner Street one night, a supposed Republican enclave in the heart of Dublin and a woman said to him,

  “The Corrs are the heart of Ireland.”

  He’d muttered,

  “Does it get more fucked than this?”

  Van Morrison, before he got too rich and too arrogant, sang the wondrous “Madame George,” that got John A. Stapleton as close to tears as even CS gas could achieve. In times of
stress, like waiting on a rooftop, the lone sniper par excellence, he could sing the whole of Astral Weeks in his head. As his finger massaged the trigger, he’d sing,

  “Saw you walking, up by Cypress Avenue. . . .”

  As the Brit patrol arrived on the street below, and he selected the end soldier, fixed on him, he’d hum the melody of the final track on the album and blow the face apart. It was poetry, the music of his inheritance. And he’d disappear from the rooftop as silently as the sound of the album being shut down.

  The first part of his name — John A; he never acknowledged John . . . it was the Irish form always . . . Sean; the “A” stood for St. Anthony, Stapelton believed firmly in the man. It was widely held that if you lost something, you made a deal with Anthony, say five euro to find your wallet. Stapleton was trying to figure out how much it would cost for a country. He figured Anthony had a whole better chance of finding a United Ireland than either the Irish or UK politicians.

  Stapleton had an Achilles heel. Jameson. He could do two shots tops. Once he hit three, he lost focus, became maudlin, sentimental, sloppy. He could down pints of the black all night and still take out a guy without any bother. Reach three Jameson and he started to talk. The worst action possible. You talked, you got shafted. He exercised massive control on the rare evenings he sampled the whiskey, as the two always loomed heavy for the third. Planning strategy, it was custom to plonk a bottle of the Jay on the table and get serious. Stapleton stuck to Guinness. More than once, a commander had asked,

  “You don’t drink spirits?”

  Like heresy.

  So he’d do the two, then reach for the stout. He made even the most hardened vets a little uneasy, they wondered why he never let his defences down, especially when they were in a safe house and could afford to let the pressure ebb. A time, they were holed up in Enniskillen, after three days of lockdown, one of the guys had asked,

  “Don’t you have a personal life?”

  And got the look.

  Stapleton flexed his fingers, always a dangerous sign, fixed his dark eyes on the guy, said,