American Skin

by Ken Bruen

  As usual, I tried to caution him but the edge was where he lived. Juan encouraged his recklessness, driving him to more dangerous stunts. One evening, he helped offload a whole floor of new fittings. I was seriously pissed, ranted,

  “You bollix, the hell is the matter with you, you trying to get us killed?”

  And got that lopsided grin, like a kid who’s been caught with his hand in the till, his reaction a mix of fun and apprehension. He did what he always did when I confronted him, he drank, with intent.

  He was your two-fisted drinker, no screwing around. Tommy’s father had made me promise a long time ago to look out for Tommy. Like a fool, I promised. My life can be summarised by two conflicting threads: times of near harmony and times of chaos. I veered twixt the two like a nun on a bicycle.

  I’d be full of focus, duty, clarity, smarts, if you will, then sheer impulsiveness, a leap into the unknown. When I snap out of the latter, I go scuttling to the former. Can you follow that? It’s Irish logic at its most convoluted. I went to college, the only one in generations of pig ignorance. I like music and if you want to follow bands, being a student is the best way to go. Pursue it with a diligence bordering on hysteria. My old man worked on the railways, forty years and got a pocket watch and destroyed lungs. My mother, as Galway as Nora Barnacle and as feisty, would wonder about me, go,

  “Where’d we get him?”

  If she read, which she didn’t, she might have considered Yeats and “The Stolen Child.” Would exclaim to her neighbours,

  “He’s as odd as two left feet.”

  Because I didn’t fit the mold.

  Then got the chance to study English at Trinity. Betrayal at the local point. She’d cry,

  “We’ve got a perfectly good University here.”

  I didn’t argue, just forged on, the payoff was that I’d be away from home. The downside was Tommy. Took him for a pint, said,

  “They think I shouldn’t go to Trinity.”

  He was in his headbanger phase, speed and Black Sabbath, said,

  “Fuck ‘em, you gotta go.”

  I’d been drinking Guinness, the creamy pints before me like communion. Tommy was on cider (Loony juice), his third, with Jack Daniels chasers, I’d reached the crux, said,

  “What about you, buddy?”

  He raised his glass, clinked mine, said,

  “Me? I’m going with.”

  And did.

  Changed his act, at least outwardly, got a job in a bookies and began the highs and lows that marked his life.

  Money.

  He’d amass it, blow it, in/out, punctuated with dope. The booze, regular and habitual as it was, was support to the main event. He’d read, no, studied Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and became a Gonzo convert. He financed the college years. We drank in Mulligan’s and the Joyce connection was never mentioned. After my degree, I felt I’d gone soft. Dublin was terrific but the years of booze, fish and chips suppers, blew my gut out. I hated that, saw it as weakness, loss of control. That, I dread above all. Over one too many Jamesons, at some club in Leeson Street, I said to Tommy,

  “Man, I’ve got to get in shape.”

  He was downing Tequila slammers, said,

  “Join the army.”

  “Okay.”

  Clink of glasses, then I asked,

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I’ll come with.”

  Did.

  Second betrayal, the worst an Irishman can do, joined the British army. They kicked the fuck out of me. Stationed on the Salisbury Plains, as dead a place as you envisage; if Irish rain is, as they say, soft, then the stuff in the UK is as cold as the pubs during Lent.

  Tommy was managing a bookies in Salisbury, up to his arse in dope, scams, and risk. Three months in, I was in bad shape. We were downing pints of bitter, JD chasers.

  One of the very rare nights I’d off, he said,

  “Jack it.”

  “What?”

  “Throw in the towel, leg it, what the fuck do you care?”

  I cared.

  Two points heavily against me in the army, I was Irish and maybe worse, a college boy.

  Fuck on a blackboard.

  A double header of destruction. They were trying to kill me and not even being subtle about it. My front teeth had been knocked out, the new crowns hurting like a son of a bitch. I downed the JD, said,

  “I signed on for a year, I’ll do the year.”

  Tommy signalled another round, ensuring prompt service with,

  “And whatever you’re having yourself.”

  Gave me one of his rare looks of total openness, he had the eyes of a child, said,

  “My money’s on you, Steve-o.”

  I managed to last the full twelve months in the army, it was as vicious and brutal as I could have imagined. Eight months in, the sergeant said to me,

  “You want to try for the stripes?”

  He hadn’t called me Paddy, which they did at every opportunity and that made me cautious. I asked,

  “What stripes?”

  “Corporal.”

  I never hesitated, said

  “No . . . thanks.”

  He had begun by loathing me, trying every which way to break me, and slowly, he’d begun to ease up as I completed each task. I was in shape, and a confidence had crept in as I realised I had an aptitude for the life. He stared at me, said

  “Don’t be a thick, Paddy, it’s a chance to move up, lots of perks, plus, you get to give orders.”

  I held his stare, he no longer scared me, asked,

  “And the men, they’re going to take orders from a . . . Paddy!”

  He spat on the ground, one of his less endearing habits, said,

  “You make them follow orders, that’s why it’s called command.”

  I didn’t bite. I’d found a niche, a way of keeping my head down, watching my back and staying alive, I’d saved most of my pay, and knew I could get through. The sergeant was disgusted and stomped off.

  One of the squaddies, guy named Sheils, from up North, had been on my case from day one. Always with the Irish jokes, the stealing of my gear, screwing with my head. He hated the Irish, liked to say,

  “I’m of Scots Protestant descent and we colonised your godforsaken country, what we’d get? Fucking bombs in our public toilets, shot in the back. . . .”

  He had the truly dangerous blend of arrogance and stupidity, he’d have been seriously threatening if he’d one ounce of intelligence. I’d learned a vital lesson from the Brits, take your time. So I bit down, and with every successive humiliation, like urine in my bed, glass in my porridge, I acted like it was no biggie.

  Sitting in the pub in Salisbury with Tommy, my first Saturday off in weeks, I told him about Sheils. Tommy was flush, he was making money hand over fist and spending at an equal rate. He was drinking gin, said,

  “You ask the fuck for Jameson, he says, they don’t stock Mick piss.”

  That kind of place.

  Tommy could care less, the insults of the world he didn’t take personally anymore, he’d been so severely hurt for so long, he just assimilated it into the whole bleak view he maintained. I was drinking pints of bitter and well-named it was. I daren’t lose control, my life literally depended on it.

  Tommy asked,

  “You have rifles, yeah?”

  “Course.”

  “With live ammunition?”

  “Sure.”

  “Shoot the bollix.”

  He reached in his jacket, took out a packet, said,

  “Got you something.”

  This was a first, we didn’t do gifts, wasn’t sure what to say so I said nothing, unwrapped it. A black leather wallet, with a crest on the front. A shield with a diamond in the centre, crisscrossed with two heavy lines and on the top, a cat. . . a fiery looking animal but a cat nevertheless. A logo beneath in Latin, roughly translated as virtue and nobility.

  It was the Blake coat of arms, my family name. I said,

  “Je
sus, I didn’t even know we had a crest, let alone a motto, how’d you find that?”

  He was smiling, a real smile, not his usual cynical one, said,

  “The Internet.”

  I said,

  “I’m delighted, thanks.”

  He waved it off, said,

  “You Prods, you like yer coat of arms.”

  I kept it light, said,

  “We haven’t been Protestant for donkey’s years.”

  He was looking for the barman, said,

  “Ah, once a Prod, always a Prod, you check in there, there’s a secret compartment.”

  But we got distracted and I never did get to find the secret pocket.

  The other lesson I’d learned in Salisbury was to fight dirty. None of that gentleman crap. You fought by the rules and they handed you your arse. Eventually, Sheils got tired ragging me, he’d still make the odd gesture, spit in my coffee, but he’d lost the momentum. Early morning, in the washroom, he was shaving, whistling the theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai. I locked the door, picked up the metal waste bucket and blindsided him. The force of the blow actually dented the metal. I caught him before he fell, asked,

  “You hear about the Paddy who goes into a bathroom. . .”

  Then gave him the kidney punches we’d been taught. . . continuing

  “Says to an English guy . . .”

  I got him into the stall, put his head in the bowl.

  “What’s the difference between a horse and an Englishman?”

  Pulled his head up, butted him between the eyes, then broke his nose.

  “You can bet on a horse.”

  I don’t think he found it very funny, but then, Irish jokes are a lot of things, funny is rarely one of them.

  “The first thing you learn in life is that you’re a fool.

  The last thing you learn is you’re the same fool.

  Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I

  regain consciousness.”

  — RAY BRADBURY

  A LONG TIME after the principal players in this story were buried, I was sitting one cold February evening in New York, in a studio apartment in the West Village, watching the snow fall, a full-on melancholy building. The windchill factor was ferocious, a neighbour, the only one who spoke to me, said,

  “I’m not venturing out till late May.”

  Got my vote.

  I had a glass of Jameson in my right hand, The Waterboys on the speakers. A group founded by a guy from Edinburgh, Mike Scott, they ended up in Galway, laid down a couple of classic tracks and made little impact outside of Ireland. At the time when U2 was about to conquer America, the boys were playing small venues in Ireland. Their following may have been small in rock terms but it was fierce in its enduring loyalty. “The Whole of the Moon” was spinning and if I had to describe my love for Siobhan, the difference between us; their lyrics may best capture it, saying:

  “I saw the crescent, you she saw the whole of the moon.”

  Did she ever.

  A time when she had a semi-nervous breakdown, I think she was seventeen or so and she saw a head doctor, as they call them in Ireland. She told me that he said,

  “You are quite unique in that you have no illusions and that is a hard way to live.”

  Jesus, to see to the granite core of the world, I couldn’t hack it like that. I have to believe in . . . shit, I dunno, some kind of hope. Siobhan believed you made your own luck, and thanks to me, she ran out of all the hard-earned luck she’d strived so long to achieve and that is my burden. It’s not so much that I led her astray but that I had her think a new life was not only possible but within reach. She’d done all the work, and me, I let it unravel. They say no sin is unforgivable, well, they’re wrong. I believe there is one sin without redemption and that is to hold out the prospect of a better life and through sheer fecklessness, to let it slip away. If the Jesuits are correct and the fires of hell are being stoked for me, I’m going to ask,

  “Put on a few more coals.”

  “But to be American is to be Nietzschean in half of

  yourself. You move beyond sin even if part of you

  still believes in it.”

  — HAROLD B ROD KEY, This Wild Darkness:

  The Story of My Death

  STEVE-O.

  Tommy’s term of affection for me.

  An old joke, combining Hawaii Five–O and care. After the army, we moved back to Galway, I tried teaching but couldn’t hack the normality. It was to Tommy, on one of those endless winter evenings, when it’s raining, cold, dark, fucking primeval, I proposed,

  “Let’s go to America.”

  In jig time, we were in New York. I got on the building site straightaway but Tommy joined Kinney’s, the cleaning contractors, and ended up scraping chewing gum from the floor of Radio City, — he couldn’t believe such a job existed and it nearly killed him, he said,

  “You cannot imagine how difficult it is to get that shit off a carpet, and man, the places they stick it.”

  So I put in the word and he got to join me at the site. We’d a year of wild and wildest abandon.

  The cab stopped and the driver intoned,

  “Dino’s, that like new?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  He was already on a different track, fiddling with the radio, heard the sports, hit the dash, shouted,

  “Goddamn Jets choked.”

  I paid the freight and laid a five on top, then on impulse, added the nun’s Padre Pio, he said,

  “Caramba, He is the man.”

  Then, as he placed the relic beside yhe Virgin, added,

  “Watch your ass.”

  He was already firing up another menthol as he burned rubber outta there. The Madonna had her work cut out, is how I figured it. I took a moment on the sidewalk, what we call footpaths. Get my face in gear. Truth was, Juan was an arsehole but Tommy rated him, so, so I’d gone along. They had dope in common. I never quite figured if Juan was Mexican, Puerto Rican but he affected characteristics of each and was big on the macho bullshit.

  I opened the door of the place and stepped in. A bar ran along one wall and then ten to fifteen tables scattered around. Right down at the end was Juan and not alone, a blond woman beside him. He raised his arm

  “Stephan, amigo, hombre.”

  His lean on my name was a pain but I let it slide, walked to greet him, already regretting I’d made the call. He moved, threw his arms round me, intense hug, going,

  “Muy bueno, muchacho.”

  I think.

  Some Spanish shit anyway. Over his shoulder, my eyes locked with the woman. And wallop, my heart did a jig, as fast and unexpected as that. A very pretty face, like Virginia Madsen in her early twenties. It was the look in her eyes that snared me, consisting of. . . amusement, heat, smirk.

  As if she’d known me and knew exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking I’d sell my soul to have her, Jesus. It came totally out of left field, I loved Siobhan with every fibre of my being, she was the love that passes all understanding. I just couldn’t imagine life without her. This heat, this . . . I hate to admit it, this pure lust was something I’d never experienced. And didn’t want.

  Juan finally released me, stood back, said

  “Hombre, you look good.”

  He was wearing a loose shirt, bright red over white combat pants, boots, very worn, very scruffed. The stacked heels brought him to my chin. His skin was sallow and he had a soft face, almost feminine till you saw the eyes, something lurked there, cautioned you to move with extreme care. When he hugged me, at the base of his spine I felt the outline of the gun. Weapons were always a feature with him. I guessed him to be my age, a year off forty, yet when he smiled, which was often, he could pass for early twenties. The smile had never been connected to warmth, he extended his hand, went,

  “Amigo, meet my ol’ lady, Sherry. Babe, get your ass up, meet my soul bro.”

  Dolly Parton memorably said,

  “You know how mu
ch it costs to look this cheap?”

  Sherry had the same idea. About five feet five and all of it trouble. Wearing a tight black halter neck that barely contained her breasts, it didn’t so much cling as hang on for dear life and who wouldn’t? A short black skirt of some shiny material that I swear glistened. Sheer black nylons that couldn’t be hose, too goddamm sexy and the “come get me” heels. My breath was caught in my chest, Juan said,

  “Go woman, give him a big one.”

  Yeah.

  There was a mocking tone in his voice, he knew the effect. She leaned over, kissed me on both cheeks, the aroma of her perfume was dizzying. Beneath it, something else, raw sexuality. She whispered,

  “Poison.”

  Then moved back, gave me that smile, said,

  “The perfume.”

  Juan clapped me on the back, said,

  “I’ll get us some drinks, yes?”

  He moved along to a swarthy guy in an Armani suit and they began an intense conversation. I sat opposite Sherry, she had a pack of Virginia Slims, slid one out, put it in her mouth, waited. I picked up a book of matches, struck one, leaned over, a slight tremor in my fingers, she cupped my hand, said,

  “Easy.”

  Caution or encouragement?

  She blew a perfect ring, watched it curl above us, like an omen of very bad karma. Her accent had hooked me, it was trailer trash with a hint of hillbilly and a hard nasal underlay to edge it along. I asked, like I gave a toss,

  “Isn’t it illegal to smoke here?”

  Now she let her whole face smile, from her eyes to her even small perfect teeth, said,

  “If it’s fun, it’s illegal, yeah?”

  Argue that.

  I said,

  “You’re not a New Yorker.”

  The question irritated her, saw it wipe the smile from her eyes, as if she expected more, better, she said,

  “Yo, bud, newsflash: Ain’t nobody from New York, I’m from Tallahassee.”