Bone Idol

by David Louden

  My dad wore more than five years on his face since the last time I had seen him. His hair was all but white and a heavy week of growth on his face sat up, prickly and proud. I watched, half in shock of seeing him and half in awe as his hands appeared to operate independently from the rest of him. My exposure to Jack Morgan had been limited but in all the time I’d been blessed with his company I had never seen him move that way; he was masterful of his instrument; it responded to his touch in ways I could only will mine to do and he did it all with an ease that gave me hope. Maybe it would be genetic. Two songs later and I was still hypnotized, I couldn’t understand how the world kept turning, how Castle Street hadn’t ground to a halt to watch the one true skill my dad possessed. At the end of the song I noticed how he had almost caught my eye so I started walking, up Castle Street, onwards towards the black taxi. I hadn’t noticed he hadn’t started playing again but as I slowed a hand landed on my shoulder, large, rough with fingers riddled with calluses. His eyes were heavy but happy to see me, not even a trace of the rage Mum had run from. His skin sat pale with a tinge of yellow to it. He took me to a café on Bridge Street, one which turned a blind eye to his hip flask which was almost the size of a vodka bottle. Jack ordered two teas and a BLT for the boy before taking a booth by the window which looked out on to a queue of buses. He looked as nervous as I was.

  “So you’re a banjo man then.” his voice still as powerful as I recalled.

  “I don’t know, I haven’t played it before.”

  “But you want to?”

  I nodded.

  “What do you want to achieve from it?” he slurped when he drank.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you want to do something with it you need to get really good. You need a skill and a career. There’s a lot of people titting around with shit that’s never going to take them anywhere. You make sure you get yourself a proper job, none of that airy fairy hippy shite people call work. Musician’s a good job. It’s artistic but it’s a proper skill. Takes real work to make a banjo do what you want rather than the other way around. You want that?”

  “I think so.” I said, a little taken aback.

  “So how come you’ve been able to afford yourself a beautiful piece of kit like that?” he asked, pawing over my acquisition.

  “I’m working now and it was my birthday.”

  “Of course it was.” Dad’s poker face slipped.

  It was something he should have remembered. It must have stung a good bit because he sat silent for ten minutes until he finished his tea and half his flask. On the way out of the café he gave me a hug and slipped me a twenty from his banjo case. I walked to the corner of Bridge Street – where it met with the High Street. Stopping I tucked myself into the corner of Cash Converters and watched between the bus queues as my dad crossed the road, hesitated for a second before walking into the pub on the corner of the street.

  I was slightly disappointed to find that I couldn’t just own a banjo and become its master. If there was some kind of natural talent that’s passed from father to son it clearly required a little bit of work. I spent the money Dad gave me on a songbook but it might as well have been written in German.

  9

  SHE WROTE MIDDLEMARCH in block capitals on the black board before underlining it three times. She’d glide back to her desk before placing both palms on the desk and arching forward showcasing just enough of her overfull cleavage to get the entire classes attention.

  “Middlemarch gentlemen. This text will be on the examination at the end of the year, there you have it a full nine months prior notice there’s no excuses for failure.”

  “What’s Middlemarch Miss?” asked someone from the back.

  “It’s pretty much the same as Mansfield Park.” I offered.

  “And what the fuck is Mansfield Park?!”

  “That’s where your ma got fingered!” heckled Gerry with the Zippo scar to everyone’s amusement.

  “Calm down gentlemen. Middlemarch put plainly is your first textual analysis so get to it. It would be foolish of me to even begin to tell you what it’s about as clearly you all hang on my every word,” she wasn’t too far wrong “so the moment I tell you to read it you’ll obviously read it. This means, next week when I ask the question what’s Middlemarch? You’ll be able to give me a satisfactory answer.”

  Amazingly that was that. She owned that class. Anything she asked of our little band of working class stiffs with our deadbeat dads and tobacco fingers, she got. After class I’d make an excuse to stay behind. It was only September so it wasn’t obvious but I was going to have to start coming up with some serious whoppers if I wasn’t going to out myself as a teacher’s pet and earn the same bottom feeding existence a cop gets in prison. She pretended not to notice me at first, going through her notes for the next class as the corridors filled with high pitched teens but she’d flick the hair from her eyes and there I was; attentive and bubbling with potential – though for what is anyone’s guess.

  “Douglas!”

  “Middlemarch Miss McCormack.”

  “What problem do you have with Middlemarch?”

  “It’s not exactly what I like being caught reading.”

  “And what would you like to be caught reading then?” She got to her feet and walked over, pulling up and spinning around the seat in front of me so we sat nose-to-nose.

  “You said this was creative writing.”

  “This is English Literature Doug, creative writing comes next year.”

  “Miss McCormack, excuse this question if it seems rude but have I just been shanghaied into reading George Eliot?”

  “Middlemarch is important Mr. Morgan,” she said stressing the mister “writing styles go in and out of fashion, voices change. One moment there’s an omniscient voice either undercutting or reinforcing ever syllable, guiding the reader, telling them how to think and feel, then there’s not. Suddenly it’s seen as crude and lacking in nuance and an entire generation of writers are no longer considered relevant, at least within their own lifetime. Do you know what kind of writer you want to be?”

  “I don’t know if I want to be a writer.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  I stared into her face for a moment before she spoke again.

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  “I got a job at the dog track.”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “Hey don’t knock it, I bring home more than enough three days a week.”

  “And the other four days?”

  “I have to admit I’m giving serious thought to either learning the banjo and drinking quite a bit or becoming a ninja fighter pilot who solves crimes with the help of his invisible dog.”

  It got a laugh out of her but her next class was racked up outside the door as a reminder of my place in the pecking order.

  “I had better get these ones in before half them skip out but read Middlemarch and do it in secret so that nobody tries to dock you street cred. You’ll never know the kind of writer you want to be until you’ve shopped around.”

  “I’ll grab a copy on my way to work, how’s that?”

  “You’re working tonight?”

  “I’m working now. I’m going to have to cut Religious Education.”

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “It’s all hocus-pocus and metaphor taken literally anyway, I get enough fiction here with you.”

  “You any good at picking a winner?”

  I thought for a moment about telling her the truth “I do alright.”

  She handed me a crisp ten pound note and told me to make it rain a little for her. I’d tuck it in my pocket and look at it once I got beyond the school walls. It had passed through her fingers, those beautiful, delicate, fine fingers. I’d fix a good one for her, risk or no risk I’d check the odds pick the one race with the longest dog going and send him home. She’d be bowled over by the game I was packing; so I did and the next day I handed her over £175
much to her amazement.

  That weekend I had Saturday off but was working the track on Sunday. I took myself and my back pocket copy of Middlemarch into town to meet up with Joe to score some pot from his older brother who lived in some newly built apartments round by the edge of the Lagan. I hopped out of the cab at the top of Castle Street and didn’t notice the jig until I was almost right on top of it. I heard The Irish Rover and knew that my dad was back to earn what he could with the weekend shoppers. He’d had a shave and a haircut since the last time I had seen him and his brow was strained, focused. I inched closer, no smell, no booze.

  “Hey Dad.” I said, barely containing the smile.

  “Oh hello. How’s practice?”

  “Umm not too good, I’m not too sure what I’m doing with it.”

  “Then why’d you buy it?”

  “Umm I guess I wanted to learn it.”

  “So…”

  I could see he was waiting on me to read between the lines but I was firing blanks.

  “So why don’t you go fucking learn it!” he stated, retuning his Ozark.

  “I thought maybe we could learn it together.”

  “You forget I know how to play mine. Look what do you want I’ve a lot on and don’t have the time to play fucking guessing games?”

  “Nothing.”

  I ran off before the sight of him fuming at me made me cry or at the very least before he saw it. It happened at the end of the street regardless. I looked back as I gained control of my eyes and heaving chest, he wasn’t looking. I should have been relieved but I wasn’t.

  I was softer than he was but I was still my father’s son so I was stubborn. Like a fucking ox. When I got home I could have thrown it in the corner and swore to never touch it again but I sat down and tried to figure out the sheet music and how it translated into what my fingers should be doing. I tried until it got dark, locked up quietly in my bedroom for hours. It was fruitless; I couldn’t get my head around it and didn’t know how to start the conversation with Mum so I said nothing and opted to lay myself out on my bed smoke cigarettes and read Middlemarch before dog-earring a page to keep my spot while I tossed one off to the thought of Miss McCormack and those breasts that triple jiggle with each footstep.

  I’d wake late the next day and have to skip breakfast to stand a chance of getting to the track on time for my shift. I grabbed the tin foil wrapped sandwiches which Mum always left in the refrigerator for me, stuffed them into my backpack and raced out the door. Tara was bogarting the phone again; another angry call to one of her angry gal pals about a stupid boy who had broken up with her. If any of them were worth a damn I would have offered to introduce them to my belt but they weren’t and she was too full of issues to see it.

  I got to the track and was the last one through the door. Mike had left word with the Front of House manager to call everyone in that morning for a special announcement and “no if you’re not working you will not be receiving an hour’s money for attending” she explained time and time again to hung-over apes. We stood around in the kennel (which was the only place large enough to house all of us) waiting on Mohammed to get off his ass and come down from that floral carpeted mountain. As he appeared I got the sense that he wasn’t calling us all here to tell us how fucking fabulous we were. The first thought was sting operation and at least half of us were going to the pokey for fiddling the place but I didn’t see any cops, uniformed or otherwise. Then I thought maybe it was just me they were after but that didn’t explain why Richie and Mark D and Caesar were all here. I didn’t know Caesar’s real name but he got the nickname because he chowed down a whole can of the dog food to win a bet one night. Maybe Mike found out I was a cheating prick and everyone wanted to take turns kicking my balls in before they called the cops.

  “C’mon Mike fuck the drama let’s get this started, why are we here?” yelled Mark D.

  “Yeah Mike I got my kids in the car, let’s do this.”

  “Ok, quiet down.” instructed the Front of House manager

  “There’s no easy way to go about this other than to just come right out and say it.”

  My throat was dry; my tongue four times its normal size. I was just waiting on that sausage finger to point at me.

  “For some time now we’ve been running a good team and had some real good days but it would seem they have come to an end. The truth of the matter is that business is down, costs are up and the pinch has become whatever’s a lot fucking bigger than a pinch.”

  “So what are you saying Mike?”

  “Give the man a chance to speak!”

  “What I’m saying is that for our casual staff, the young men and women who we simply could not have come this far without; today is your last day. I’m very sorry but I can not afford to keep you on any longer. The rest of you will have to consider your positions, some of you may have to work a reduced week, others may be asked to take on added responsibilities without recompense I might add and the rest will probably be better off parting company.”

  “And if we do all that?”

  “Then we might hang in there long enough for me to work out a deal and sell the place and we stand a chance of still having a job for everyone in three months.”

  Mike skipped out of there before Caesar took his head off. He didn’t have much call to want to kill him; at least not right then. I was on my last shift and had nothing to show for my months of nest egg building. I couldn’t really put my finger on where it had all gone; all I knew was that it had.

  That night I walked the first two races straight. Mike was a good guy and was in enough shit without me sticking it to him. When I got back to the kennel I watched as Mark D loaded two of the track’s televisions into the back of his car while Caesar tried to figure out how to wedge one more of the finance office’s computers into his Lada.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Oh it’s all come out in the wash now kid. Apparently this shit has been coming on for months, months and months. Someone heard something about the staff pension fund being empty and now nobody can get a hold of Mike. I wouldn’t stand still too long kid or one of these angry men will mistake you for part of the furniture and take you home too.” explained the Kennel Master.

  I got to the Front of House manager and asked her if my wages for that evening had been sorted. She said something about them being posted out because they were severance and I could feel the cold hard mushroom-meat of the cock that was about to shaft me creeping to the back door. I emptied what I had on me; it came to £5.21 and on the third race laid it all off on a 7-1 for the win. The fourth race I took £30 of what I’d made and laid it on a 3-1 conscious of that one time when my system had defied me but I needn’t have worried as he romped home. I sat out the fifth race because of that one teller; that one little man who saw everything and had a sneaking suspicion I was up to something; probably because he was too. I missed the sixth race because Mum had called on my phone to ask what I wanted for dinner leaving me just one last chance at the track to be a winner. I checked the form guide and hit up all my regulars who were laying their money on every dog other than the one I had decided was going to win. The King Still Lives was a 16-1 outsider; he had brought up the rear on his last three outings here and wasn’t fairing too much better north of Warrenpoint. I had £160 of my own money in my pocket plus another £50 from the old timers and having dosed the rest of the mutts up on sweet potato and corned beef sandwiches I went to the lady teller and slammed £210 on…

  “The King Still Lives, Lucy…to win.”

  “You sure son? That’s a lot of dough.”

  “Tell it to the old guys over there, they love a slim chance.”

  She wrote out my docket, stamped it and handed it over. It was my last con at the Antrim Road Dog Track and I wasn’t going to watch it from a monitor in the kennel. I pushed my way through men who stank of sweat, or beer, or piss; interrupted conversation after conversation as I fought my way down the steps to the front wher
e I was only separated from the sandy track by a chicken wire fence. As the starters shot rang out I thought what if they win? and then it was too late. The dogs shot out of the traps; even with a gut full of spud the favourites were still a lot more responsive than The King Still Lives and opened up an early lead. I knew early leads stood for nothing but I couldn’t help but feel the pounding in my chest and the sweat collect on my worried brow. One lap down and he was in fourth place. Still plenty of race left but my heart wouldn’t listen and felt as though half the eastern terrace could hear it. He moved into third on a tight bend as First Class began to feel the effects of a traditional Sunday potato and bowl of parsnip. As they crossed the line going into the final lap The King Still Lives was tied for second but he still had some work to do if he was going to close down Danny’s Boy who was 2-1 on and should have had £25 riding on him. “If he comes through I am donkey fucked,” I thought “I’m going to have to sell my laptop to pay that out.” The third lap was heating up and by now I was screaming.