For the Good Times

by David Keenan

  *

  Another thing I mind is the sizzlers, these big massive steaks they served still sizzling on a hot plate at the canteen in the caravan park that were the side of a cow, basically, and every day for dinner we had one of these guys each and nothing else until the guy what runs it says to us, don’t you guys eat your vegetables, and Tommy says to him, I spent my childhood stealing spuds from the grocer’s, he says, from here on out it’s steaks and nothing but, big lad.

  *

  But Mack was right when he said that the sketch was complicated, even if he didn’t realise quite how much. Tommy’s da, it turned out, had liberated half the stash himself. He had been sitting on it the whole time and over the years he had been digging into it and selling it to local clowns and to gangland headcases and to drug dealers. Anyone, basically, with a couple of quid to run together. As soon as he hears that Mack is asking after it, he comes clean to us, has Tommy’s ma leave the room – fuck only knows what she did with herself – and this big pale leprous hand comes floating out from behind this black curtain, this black curtain like hell’s gates opening right in front of us, and he makes us shake on it and promise that we would tell nobody while we figure out what the fuck story we’re going to come up with for this one. He was Tommy’s da, after all. And family is forever.

  Luckily, he’d been doing all this through a guy name of Jimmy Smalls, who in turn was passing them on to a guy name of Danny McGonigle, who was the fella doing the actual deal in the first place. So that although the trail was messy, at least Tommy’s da wasn’t the first point of contact. But still, this left us with several fucking headaches.

  Headache number one: it made me look like a plum after my big speech where I laid it on thick about him being a hero of the revolution or whatever the fuck it was what I said.

  Second headache: Mack knew exactly what the size of the arms stash was supposed to be. There was going to be questions when half of it turned out to be unaccounted for.

  Headache number three: (and this might have been wild speculation on my part but) my big paranoid fear back then was that Mack knew where the stash was the whole time. That he knew what had happened to it and that he was playing every one of us along as part of, I don’t know, a loyalty test, or a way of flushing out old corrupt remnants of the IRA, like Tommy’s da, or some covert scheme or other.

  The point is we were fucked if we did and fucked if we didn’t. And did is better than didn’t. In my book, anyroads. And this might teach you something about Tommy. He went ahead and he bought that caravan. He got Barney in without telling him the full story. He went through with the whole deal of moving us down to Armagh to this caravan park in the middle of fucking nowhere. All the time knowing full well that the entire set-up was a ruse and that it was his own da’s backhanded scheming (let’s face it) that we were going to have to go through the masquerade of unravelling.

  *

  That was a word Tommy taught me. That word called masquerade. He was the first person I ever heard use it. He found this mad painting of a fox lying in the woods in a car boot sale. He was convinced it was worth money. He shows it to Barney and Barney says to him, a dead fox, eh? The fox isn’t dead, Tommy says to him, what are you talking about? That fox is fucking dead alright, Barney says. It’s just sleeping, Tommy says. Tommy’s getting all sentimental about this fucking wild fox lying in the fucking woods. It’s dead, Barney says to him. It’s a dead fucking fox, lying in the woods, dead. It’s just sleeping, Tommy says. The fox is just lying there sleeping. And Barney says to him, the fox is fucking dead. Do you think he could have got that close to it if it had only been sleeping? And Tommy says to him, you mugs know nothing about art. And you know nothing about foxes, neither. That fox is just sleeping, he says. That painting is what you call a masquerade.

  *

  Son, did I tell you there was a big picture of your man Mickey Mouse on the side of the caravan? Tommy found it in a skip and fell in love with it. Repainted the van and stuck it on the side. He loved his cartoons on a Saturday morning. This is a piece of art, he says to us, and then he says that he was going to subscribe to the Reader’s Digest as soon as he has enough money. This is what we should be doing, he says, we should be furthering ourselves. I don’t know how he was getting into all this stuff about reading and about art and stuff. For an uneducated Irishman it made no sense.

  *

  Right, so as there were two plans. The first was Mack’s. The arms, according to us, were buried in a field behind a sewage works near the border and so as we could dig them up without arousing suspicion, Mack’s idea was that we were to fill the caravan with blocks of peat, which we would then claim we were going around digging up for the fire and the most they would do is chase us off and call us a bunch of halyins. The second was ours and it coincided nicely with Mack’s. It was that we would buy all this peat, dig a big fuck-off hole in the ground, dump the arms down into it, fill the hole with peat, dig it all back up again, lay claim to the arms in the name of the Free State, and everybody wins. Only first we had to get the arms off Jimmy Smalls, who in reality had them in a garage in Milford.

  *

  Jimmy Smalls lived alone with his ma and when we turned up she was making him his crispy pancakes, and sure I love those things, so I do, and she took a few more out the packet and stuck them in the oven, just for us, so as we ate these fucking dynamite wee crispy pancakes and all the while his ma’s oblivious, completely clueless, but Jimmy knows something is up. He’s chewing all slow like a mad old bull on its last meal and scratching his leg underneath the table and looking up at us with his head down.

  Now Jimmy Smalls had a big lump on his coupon. He had been jumped by a gang of Huns when he was coming home from school one day and this egg-shaped lump on his forehead had risen up and had never gone away. Him and his sister Denise were both picked on bad when they was young. Tommy’s da says people used to call her Disease Smalls. Ha ha, that was a good one.

  So Barney’s looking at this fucking lump on Jimmy Smalls’s head and glancing over to me and winking and I know he’s going to say something. He puts his fork down and he says to Mrs Smalls, sure Mrs Smalls, would you have any vegetables to go with this choice wee crispy pancake?

  Ah, son, she says to him, it’s only these oven chips, I never knew youse were coming, otherwise I would have got them in special, like. Never mind, Barney says, I’ll just help myself to this Brussels sprout on Jimmy’s head here. Then he bangs Jimmy in the ribs.

  Jimmy’s raging. I didn’t fucking stick a fucking vegetable up my head, he says, this is a serious fucking injury. All the while he’s pointing to this fucking egg thing sticking out his head. You with your fucking baby skin, he says to Barney, you’ve never seen a day’s combat in your fucking life.

  Now like I says, your man Barney had anything but baby skin. He looked like he had fallen asleep in the blazing sunshine in a kennel in the Mediterranean. That’s how he got his nickname, The Italian Pit Bull. All the time Jimmy’s ma is just sitting there smiling, I don’t know if she was all there or what. Let me see your hands, Barney says to Jimmy Smalls. Sure, I will not, Jimmy says, and now he’s sitting with his hands under the table. Why, because they’re all soft from doing your ma’s dishes your whole life? Barney says to him. He does his dishes, his ma says. Jimmy’s a good boy. Okay, so she’s out to lunch. Barney leans over to Jimmy and starts trying to grab at his arm. Jimmy’s sitting on his hands now. Let me go, you bastard, he says. I don’t need to show you my hands in my ma’s own house, he says. There’s a tussle. Barney gets up behind him and with his big bear strength he pulls Jimmy’s arms up and this thing goes flying out of Jimmy’s hand and slides along the floor of the kitchen. It’s a tiny little chatsby, a wee fucking snub-nosed handgun. None of us could believe our lamps.

  Is this how you fucking welcome us? Tommy says to him, leaping up. With a gun under the fucking table? I came here to save your fucking arse, he says to him. Don’t make me fucking bury it. You fucking shady
wee bastard, Barney says to him, you’re a fucking shady wee cunt, he says. Jimmy’s ma gets up. I’ll make some teas, she says, you boys make yourself comfortable. The whole thing is fucking weird. Now even I’m starting to see red. We drag Jimmy out to the garage in the back garden and that’s when I lose it. Fucking hold him down, I says to Barney and Tommy, fucking hold that wriggling wee bastard still. Then I whip out my dick and I take a pish all over him. You fucking woman, I says to him as I’m pishing on his head, you fucking woman, as he’s lying there, crying, like a woman.

  That was unnecessary, Barney says to me, you should just have banged him one. I could not believe what I was hearing.

  *

  It was a messy start, mind. We had to clean him up. I bunged his ma some readies, I don’t know why.

  You’re a wee angel, she says to me, which only made it worse. Then we drive off, in the dark, to this garage Jimmy Smalls had, down a lane behind a petrol station, in the dark, this garage lit up by this broken sign, this broken sign flashing on and off and making this buzzing noise, this buzzing noise that went gar-age gar-age gar-age, in the dark.

  *

  So there was this one poem Tommy knew off by heart, no one knew how he had learnt it or why. But he must have put the effort in, because he couldn’t read it on his own, so as someone must have taught him. When he was nervous he would turn it on and go into it, ‘The One Eye of the Little Yellow God’, and on the way to the garage in the dark he starts it off, this whole fucking thing about a one-eyed yellow god in the sky, raining down on all the poor bastards below. The one-eyed yellow god was the guy he turned to in a corner. Him and Perry Como, what a team. So Tommy goes on with this poem, and it’s a sit-on-your-hoop epic, and Barney’s up front with Jimmy Smalls, who stank of my own pish, which was rank, I admit, with Jimmy staring into space like he’s already dead. We get to the flashing garage sign, which is buzzing, in the dark, and that’s when Jimmy goes and drops the bomb.

  I need to get the keys from your man McCaffrey what runs the garage, he says to us, on account of it belonging to the fella. How many people know about this fucking garage? Tommy says to him. Just me and your da and your man McCaffrey, Jimmy says. Does your man McCaffrey know what’s hidden in there? Tommy says to him. Sure he knows nothing, Jimmy Smalls says.

  Okay, we can’t be seen by this ignoramus, Tommy says. I’m going to trust you, Jimmy, to go around there on your own, and to get the keys and come back without a word. You’ve got two minutes, he says to him, before we blow the place to kingdom come. I looked at Tommy and I could see that he was serious. We get out the caravan and Tommy pulls out a chatsby, puts it up to Jimmy Smalls’s head. You were going to shoot me, you wee bastard, he says, and now I’m hotter than I feel inclined to tell. Two minutes, Tommy says to him, then the whole shabazz goes up. I think he meant to say shebang, The Shabazz was an Indian restaurant in Belfast, but I wasn’t going to be the one to correct him.

  Jimmy disappears around the corner and Barney unbuttons his shirt. I’m sweating like a rapist, he says. It’s a clear night and the stars are out. When you get outside Belfast you can really see the stars, I says to them. And what are they saying tonight, Socrates? Tommy says. Something about a one-eyed yellow god, raining down on all of Ireland, I says to him. I didn’t catch the rest. Tommy laughed then. Some poem, isn’t it? he says. It is, I says to him, the way you tell it.

  We stood there and counted to one hundred and twenty under our breath, with the bright stars above us in the sky, until there was no sign of Jimmy coming back, and Tommy says to us, fuck it, and he kicks the lamp post next to him, and the light sputters for a moment, and I look around at Barney and he’s standing there, smiling, and I start to laugh myself, I just burst out laughing, it was great right then, that’s all I can say, we were going to blow the place sky-high; what a feeling.

  *

  Okay, so this is a cracker, tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

  Pat and Mick are in a park off the Falls Road and they find a stash of

  three hand grenades, planked

  beneath a tree.

  Pat says, we had better hand these in to the peelers

  but Mick says to him, wait, what if one of them blows up on the way?

  Pat says to him, don’t worry,

  in that case we’ll just lie and tell them

  that we only found two.

  *

  We go charging round the corner and through the window we can see Jimmy lit up in the night because he’s behind the desk with the cashier and he’s on the fucking blower. Barney kicks the door in and takes a shot at him, hits him in the wrist and it’s like his arm exploded, his hand is blown off and his tendons dangling down and the phone is still in his hand, hanging there, and Tommy jumps up and slides over the counter and the cashier crouches down and starts whimpering and Tommy picks up this night-duty torch that is lying there on the counter and he starts beating Jimmy over the head with it, I see his head cave in, I think he took his lamps out, but Tommy keeps at it, the noise is disgusting, fucking, stupid, cunt, Tommy’s screaming, whapping him over the head with this fucking thing, we, came, here, to, help, you, you stupid, fucking, cunt, he’s yelling, and now he’s dead, fuck it, Jimmy Smalls is dead.

  Tommy to the cashier: who was your man Jimmy Smalls calling? Quick, he says, and he picks the cashier up by the hair and pushes him, face down, into the counter. A car pulls into the garage. They catch light of what’s going on and they’re out of there in seconds. I don’t know, the guy says, I really don’t fucking know. What’s he say on the phone? Tommy says. You were standing next to him the whole time, what did he say? He said nothing, the cashier says to Tommy, he said fuck all, he says. He just picked up the phone, he just dials a number and then he just stands there, listening. Don’t fucking lie to me, Tommy screams at him, but the cashier’s crying, he’s sobbing and he’s begging for his life. I’m not lying, he says, Jimmy said fuck all, he says, he didn’t speak at all, he just stood there, listening, in a trance. There’s somebody on the other end of the phone but I couldn’t hear them speaking. They answered but they didn’t say anything. And that was when he got his arse plugged, he says. That was everything what happened, the wee cashier says. That’s all I know, he says.

  Where are the keys to the garage? Tommy says to him. They’re in the till, the guy says, and Tommy gets him to open it for him and he throws them to me. Make sure these keys work and come back and tell me, Tommy says, then he forces the guy back down into the counter and puts a gun to the side of his head. I run out back in a panic.

  I can hardly get the key in the lock for jangling but sure enough it works, and I slide the door up, and then I near shite myself. The garage is full of people. Standing there, in silence, staring back at me. It’s a fucking set-up. I pull my gun out and I jump back. I take a shot. Bam: nobody makes a sound. I let off a round. Bam bam bam: no cunt’s moving.

  That’s because they’re all fucking mannequins. Fuck me but the garage is full of mannequins all pressed up against each other, and here’s me having to squeeze through. There’s barely any room to get by and their blank eyes are staring, and their cold hands are grabbing, and they smell like they’ve been imprisoned in here for years.

  And I thought about all the mannequins that ever existed, all locked up in garages and in cupboards and with their missing arms and legs, and thrown away, in basements all over Northern Ireland, and I saw myself, right then, floating up, over Armagh, and seeing the rooftops lift off and the walls give way without a sound, trapped faces, looking up, without a word, and me, looking down, just the same.

  But I push through to the back and there are boxes stacked to the ceiling and in the boxes there is the stash of your best dreams. Rifles and handguns and fucking anti-tank mines and grenades, you name it. I push my way back through this horrible fucking silent crowd but by this time I am so elated, I’m so high, that I kiss one of the baldy chicks right on the lips. I don’t give a fuck.

  I ru
n back round to the garage, where Tommy is still holding the guy down by the hair. It’s all there, I says to him, let’s move it, and Tommy takes a cushion off the chair and puts it over the guy’s head and empties three shots into his skull. Then he winks at me.

  We cut a path through the cold, staring dummies. Barney’s freaked out but Tommy’s intrigued. We load the caravan with the weapons and we’re out of there in twelve minute flat. I says to Tommy, imagine all the silent fucking dummies, all missing limbs and with their heads all baldy, locked up in fucking empty rooms, right now, just standing there in the dark, saying nothing, just staring into each other … Does that not gives you a shiver? Naw, Tommy says to me, and he laughs, that just reminds me of my childhood, he says, and we roar off, triumphant, into the black fucking night of 1970s Northern Ireland, the best decade what ever lived.

  *

  Tommy had a friend name of Miracle Baby. He said he was a good conversationalist, which was ridiculous, cause of the kid was a retard. Something had happened to him while he was being born, his umbilical got caught round his throat and not enough oxygen went to his brain. He was in the local paper, the headline says Miracle Baby, the name stuck. He would wander round the streets because his own family couldn’t give a flying toss and he would talk to people over their hedges and people would feel sorry for him and bung him a few bob or offer him a biscuit. But Tommy actually spent time talking to the lad. I says to him once, excuse me but what the fuck is it that you and this Miracle Baby talk about? He’s into every trick, Tommy says, he knows everything what’s going on. Tommy actually had him working for him, he had him helping out in his da’s garden. I say garden, but really it was a mound of black scorched earth where some eejit had set fire to a car, and about three daffodils. Now Miracle Baby is in there, digging out flower beds and building a very fucking rudimentary rock garden, it has to be said.