Fishing the Sloe-Black River

by Colum McCann

  * * *

  Christ. I don’t know if a man can actually say what happens to him if he tries to drive through the stars. But it must be a fucking beautiful trip, that’s all I have to say.

  Got up to the bin at five bells, like always, and got to mopping the corridors, almost clean fucking forgot about our trip to the caboose and all. But out she comes from the dining room and says can we go for our stroll tonight. None of the nurses looking and she sort of takes my hand. Thank you very much, she says, straightforward as can be, a look on her that’d melt you. Polished the place to a bloody shine I did all night, just leaning into the mop like a lunatic, scrubbing all the water spots off the mirrors, taking all the stuff out of the dustbins, fixing the towels, cleaning the toilets, mopping the floors so they sparkled just like in the telly ads. Could have shaved myself by looking in that floor, I swear to God. Was finished triple bloody quick.

  Dolores had been on the piss the night before and looking no better than a burned-out saucepan. She was having a nap in the nurse’s station when out Ofeelia comes, all done up to the nines. Her hair was back from her eyes, six rhododendrons going hell for leather, and a bit of makeup here and there. She was wearing a long red dress and the biggest bloody hiking boots I’ve ever seen in my life. She had four Dunnes Stores bags in her hands, weighed down like mad so she was almost walking sideways. I whispered to her what the fuck is in the bags, Ofeelia. And she asks what did you call me. So I says nothing, just a nickname. But she nearly went barmy trying to get it out of me. So I told her what Barney called her and all, and she took out the flowers and trampled them on the bloody floor. I almost gave her a good box for messing up all my hard work, but there were all these tears in her eyes and all I did was get the sweeping brush and swept all the petals into the storeroom.

  I said are we right, let’s go, and asked her again what was in the bags. I almost shit myself when I saw all that sugar, dumped out from the sachets, a huge mound of the stuff. The other bag was chock-full of the bloody syrup bottles. I asked her what she was bringing them for, but she just gave me a shrug and said right we are, we’re on our way. I had the cutters, the hammer, and the screwdriver in a red Man United bag with a picture of Paul McGrath on the side, even though he’s playing now for Villa. McGrath’s face was peeling a bit from where I put it in the washing machine by mistake years ago. We were bloody quiet getting out of there, taking off our shoes as we went across the gravel, then laced them up again and went toward the trees. She was humming something or other as we went down to the main gate. Every time we saw a few cars, in we ducked to the bushes and hid. Once she ran her fingers through my hair and I thought there and then about that Chris de Burgh song about the lady in red, which is a stupid fucking song but gets the women all horny. But there was no time for any of that. She did give me a goozer, though, a long slow one with her tongue almost halfway down my throat. I was wondering about the teeth but she didn’t say a thing. I could hardly walk straight after that one.

  When we got down to the caboose road we could hear the sea. Ofeelia stopped and had a goo at the sky for a few minutes. There was all stone walls and grass around there, like in the Saw Doctors song. There was no moon out but I swear there was a rim of light around her hair from the stars, stupid and all as it sounds. I felt like singing her a verse or two. But we heard a badger scuttling away through the bushes, which frightened the shite out of both of us, and then we just lugged our stuff up the road. I was carrying the sugar and the Man United bag and it was heavy as all get-out. There was a light in the caboose window as normal. Four of the dozers were outside, yellow as could be. There were a few charred oil barrels, a cement churner, one of those huge roller machines and a blue Bedford Van with the mining company insignia on the side, the wheels all shiny. Not the way Bedford vans are supposed to be. Not in this neck of the woods anyway.

  We circled on around the back, along the barbed wire fence, and stopped for a while in the heather. There was a fishing boat with lights on out in the sea. It wasn’t too cold at all. Trust me, she said. Don’t do anything stupid. Fair enough said I, and I knew we were up to a hell of a lot more than just touching that fucking caboose. But I didn’t care.

  Down we scrambled, to the bottom of the hill, like Steve McQueen escaping from that prison. Christ, I never felt so good. Got a hole in the Dunnes Stores sugar bag and had to hold the fucker by both ends so it didn’t spill out. Out with the wire cutters and she’s watching me with those big green eyes like a cat as we go snippety-snip and in like rabbits through the fence. What the fuck we going to do now, I says to her. She just puts her finger to those big lips and waves her arms towards the bloody bulldozer. Along we crawl, just like in the films, that red dress of hers getting awful muddy.

  The heart almost fucking leapt out of me when I saw the security guard’s shadow move in the caboose, but the wanker didn’t show. Under the bulldozer we got and I’ll be fucked if Ofeelia didn’t start reaching up into the huge bloody engine and start clipping every wire in sight. Christ the woman was around the bend and back again. I was getting a bit of a kick out of it, it must be said, and started to reach up into the engine too, thinking fuck you Barney me boy, see if you can make a few bob now, and where the hell is your three-piece suit anyway. Then, by Christ, there looks likes there’s a million fucking wires hanging down like bloody decorations.

  I miss this place, she says to me. Used to be we had a great time up here. I nod my head. I know how you feel, says I. I had a bicycle once that got nicked when I was eight and the mother slapped me for crying. She starts whispering about her old man and how he was making a map of the sky out of Irish stories, like Cuchulainn and Diarmuid and Grainne and all. That’d be a funny fucking map, I says, the salmon of knowledge leaping out of your man’s hands. I pointed up at O’Ryan, who was lower in the sky than he was the other night. She was laughing until I told her to shut up, we’ll get caught. She smiled at me awful long until I says come on let’s get cracking.

  Ofeelia never counted on me being a dab hand with a lock, though. Up she gets with a screwdriver and the hammer and stands at the back of the JCB, whispering to me to knock the fucking petrol cap off for some reason. I tell her she’s fucking nuts, we should just pick the thing, otherwise the security guard would think this was O’Connell Street with all the noise. I’ve been doing that sort of thing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. So out comes the old trusty nail file that I carry everywhere, swear to God. Ofeelia’s happy as Larry. Those locks on the petrol tanks are a curse though and I had to use a little piece of metal that I filed down a long time ago but eventually she popped out good-oh. That was a fucking brand new JCB as well.

  Ofeelia took out the sugar and started pouring the stuff in the tank like it was going out of fashion. I heard about that somewhere but forgot. Fucks up the engine no end, a bit of sugar. No wonder she’d been robbing it. Ofeelia had no end of tricks, the yellow boys and the sugar and all. Some of it spilled out on the ground, but most of it went down the gob of the machine.

  She was humming the tune about a spoonful of sugar and the medicine going down when out hops the fucking security guard with his torch shining. Ofeelia stands stock still and I fall to the ground. He looks around a bit, lifts his right leg in the air, farts, and steps back into the caboose. I almost die laughing and Ofeelia she has a smile on her face to beat the band. Then she gets out the syrup, something I never heard about before, and dumps two bottles of the stuff in there. She tells me it’ll clog up the engine even if they get the wires fixed. That and the sugar will really do a number. The boys won’t move that dozer up the mountain for many a year, I tell her, but already she’s scrambling off to the other one. She drops the syrup bottle on the ground. Litterbug, I says and her still smiling.

  Out she pops with a coathanger from the syrup bag, with the end all sharpened to a point, and she reaches right up into the engine with those small hands. It seems like all fucking night as she punctures something or other. She knows the
se fucking engines inside out. All this petrol starts pouring out and it gets all over her red dress. Damn, she’s soaked in the stuff. In her hair and everything. I get in there and drag her out and the stuff does a number on me too. Stinks to high heaven the petrol does and she’s doused in the stuff, but so what. We were getting the job done triple quick. Then it’s another number on the wires of the second JCB, my hands shaking like fucking mad. Christ, this is living, I think. Johnnie Logan and the greenies would love me. I should run for fucking Taoiseach after this. Out with the spoonful of sugar again. In the most delightful way, she says. Then some more syrup.

  Up to the Bedford, which is open, so I pop the bonnet. Ofeelia she’s just standing there, smiling, looking up at the stars. But then there’s a clink at the caboose door and that bastard is out again, shining his bloody light, catching her in the beam and it’s all fucking hell let loose. Must have heard me messing with the Bedford. Out he steps, shining the fucker in Ofeelia’s eyes. I’m about to run but Ofeelia she’s stepping towards him and swinging her arms like a bloody windmill. It’s John O’Rourke who once slapped me around in school. She lands a good old thump on his jaw, but he gets Ofeelia by the hair and drags her down, shouting fucking bitch scraped me face. He’s in his vest and trousers. Some fucking security guard that.

  I step over and clock him one with the hammer. Didn’t mean to do that and down he drops with blood on his face, oh Christ. I kneel down and he’s all right, just cut him to fuck over the eyebrow. I’m about to say I didn’t mean it Johnnie me boy, when he knees me one in the balls and kicks me in the head as I’m down. Times don’t change. Ofeelia she’s hanging off his back in the red dress and I’m half-out for the count. Next thing I know he’s scarping away, out over the fence and away. Ofeelia, she’s laughing and crying at the same time, and there’s a mad bitch if ever I saw one. They took my caboose, she’s saying, real real low, they took my caboose. The makeup around her eyes is streaked like mad. I go up and give her a hug and she gets to kissing my eyes, just like that. I sit down on the ground and just look around, and she kneels and keeps kissing. The red dress is brown as hell now. I see John O’Rourke’s torch shining away down the hill, lashing along through the bushes towards Martin’s place. The bastard’ll call the cops, I said, let’s skedaddle.

  The door to the caboose was open though and Ofeelia was staring at it, standing there, stinking of petrol. Christ, I’m thinking, she’s off her rocker and beyond, Doctor Garlic should have kept her in solitary, and we’d all be grand now, scrubbing the toilet bowls and mopping the floors without a fucking care. Come on! I’m shouting, for Christ sake come on! It’s all right I’ll finish it now, she says. Just like that. On my own. Calm as can be. My hands are shaking like mad and I go to drag her by the dress but she’s awful quick and takes a sidestep. Please, she says, sad as can be, hair all over her face. Ah Christ, I think we were standing there for hours, her just looking at me. All right so, I say, don’t tell the cops it was me, that O’Rourke fella didn’t get a look at my face. She nods her head and turns to the caboose, closes the door awful gentle like and I take the hammer and sling it as far as I bloody can, but it bounces off the barbed-wire fence and jumps a bit on the ground. I look up at the sky and let out a big gullier at the stars.

  Right so, I says to myself, and off I go towards the hole in the fence and my hands still shaking like mad. She can get out of this fucking mess herself. Out I crawl and just lash through the heather up the side of the hill. I don’t look back for the longest time, just run up there, blazing away like Eamon Coughlan himself. After a while I sit down, take myself a place on the hill, petrol stink on my hands, and look way down towards the town, where these red-and-blue sirens are blaring like fuck, coming out towards us. I squint my eyes and see Ofeelia through the front window of the caboose.

  She’s just sitting there and smiling for some damn reason. Her hair is thrown back and the dress is ripped at the shoulder, but she’s just sitting there, watching. Bet the crazy bitch is driving that damn thing through the stars, I’m thinking. Up I stand and give her a big thumbs-up. Go on now girl, get yourself a speeding ticket! Give it an old handbrake turn! She just looks up at the huge sky up there and all the stars blazing away. I look up there too for a moment and think about all those times she might have been there with her old man, driving through the universe like fucking crazy, O’Ryan’s groin and all, that must have been a laugh.

  I can hear the sound of the ocean and the wind going mad through the heather. There’s a million bloody stars out and I’m enjoying the view, but the sirens are getting closer. Better get the fuck out of here now, I’m thinking. Back and scrub the floors like bejesus. Those blue-and-red lights are flashing away down the road, along by the trees. Oh Christ she’s done for now. I look down and Ofeelia’s still sitting there, her eyes scrunched up, that smile on her face. But there’s not much they can do except throw her back in the bin, and I’m thinking that maybe every now and then, if things work out, we’ll get a chance to go for a walk in the garden. I give her the old thumbs-up again. How about you put her up on two bloody wheels Ofeelia! Screech her round the corner of Venus and leave some skidmarks for your Ma and Da, why not! See you soon and don’t be asking me for any more syrup!

  * * *

  There’s nothing I could have done anyway even when she sat there at the window and put that cigarette in her gob and lit it. By all accounts she had popped those yellow boys like they were going out of fashion while I was climbing the hill, so maybe she didn’t feel a thing, all doped up. That’s what the coroner said anyway. She must have had them with her in her pocket. But I don’t think I ever ran as fast in my life when I saw her take out those matches. Reached down into her pocket, looked at them, took one out, struck it and that was it. The guards say I was screaming her name. Cut myself to fuck on the barbed wire. Tripped once and slammed into the door. She had locked the fucker and by the time I pulled it open she was a ball of flames, sitting there, all that petrol from the JCB lit up like a bonfire.

  She bummed that fucking cigarette off me and that’s something I’ll never forget. I once saw pictures of a monk doing the same thing, but I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Just licking away at the red dress, the flames were. And beginning to gather around her. Her stock-still in the middle of it all. Tried to roll her out but the flames got to me too, burning the shit out of my hands and the guards had to rip all my clothes off. Barney said that he heard I was crying, but I don’t take any truck with Barney any more. The bastard’s back working at the bin, and there’s no more JCBs for him, serves him right.

  I don’t even care if I was crying or not, who cares. But I know I was shouting something because one of the guards slapped me in the gob and told me to shut up. Christ, she was charred black at that stage and there they were, stamping the flames out around the caboose. It’s just an awful pity that whole fucking place never caught, that’s what I say. There were some scorch marks around the floor and her big hiking boots were black as fuck, but the place was still standing when they took me away in the ambulance. They tried to get me to lie down but there was no fucking way. I was looking at the caboose out the back of the window for as long as I could, all lit up by cop cars and fire engines and all.

  Here in the hospital they’ve been looking after my burns and filing all sorts of reports and all. Johnnie Logan and the greenies came in with a bunch of flowers for me, pink ones just like Ofeelia’s. Dolores brought me a few magazines, fair play to her. The cops are taking me to court next week and I’ll probably spend a couple of months in the slammer. I don’t care. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Then when I get out I swear to God I’m going to do a number on that caboose, up and make sure those mining boys never come back, off to fucking Timbuktu with them for all I care. One good thing about it is we knocked their plans back a good few months but they need to be finished off, pronto like. Stay away from our fucking mountains, that’s what I say.

  The cops and the doctors hav
e been asking me all about it, but all I can really remember is that when they were slamming the handcuffs on me I saw a picture of Ofeelia in my mind, and when I get to thinking about it that picture always comes back to me. And it’s always the same. It isn’t the crumple on the floor or anything, or that Dunnes Stores bag lying out by the JCBs or the flower beds or anything. It isn’t even real. She doesn’t have the cigarette in her gob or matches in her hands. It’s like something in a film I suppose. The way I see it she has flowers in her hair, dozens of them, wrapped up in the curls, and she’s sitting there, bloody pink petals flying, driving that damn caboose through the universe for the last time, smiling like the clappers, going hell for leather along by the stars. And the funny thing about it is I’m right there with her, leaving a few bloody skidmarks of my own.

  ALONG THE RIVERWALL

  Fergus nudges his wheelchair up to the riverwall and watches the Liffey flow quickly along, bloated from an evening rain, a cargo of night sky and neon, all bellying down toward Dublin bay. His father once heaved a fridge into the river and he wonders what else might lie down there. Flakes of gold paint from the Guinness barges perhaps. Blackened shells from British army gunboats. Condoms and needles. Old black kettles. Pennies and prams. History books, harmonicas, fingernails, and baskets full of dead flowers. A billion cigarette butts and bottle caps. Shovels and stovepipes, coins and whistles, horseshoes and footballs. And many an old bicycle, no doubt. Down there with wheels sinking slowly in the mud, handlebars galloping with algae, gear cables rusted into the housing, tiny fish nosing around the pedals.

  He adjusts the long black overcoat that hangs in anarchic folds around his legs and wipes the sweat off his forehead with his younger brother’s Shamrock Rovers scarf. Half a mile, he reckons, from his house in the Liberties, and the bicycle wheel that he carried in his lap has caused all sorts of problems—dropped to the ground as he gently tried to close the front door, smeared his old jeans with a necklace of oil as he negotiated the hill down by Christchurch, and bounced away as he tried to get over the quayside curb.