Songdogs (12 page)

The black Raleigh was none too comfortable, the springs gone in the seat, and there was a big fat skip in the pedals, a hiccup. It wasn’t easy to balance with all the heavy bags, and I had to retrieve a packet of biscuits that skipped out when I grazed against a lamppost. Goldgrain, his favourite. I think they’ve changed the packet though, and I almost overlooked them in the shop. Got him a pack of Major too, but that’s the last one of those I’m going to buy, he’ll be hanging his lungs out on the clothesline to dry, like grandmother’s rabbits, fluttering away in the wind.

Down along main street, some of the old farmers, fresh from the pubs, were leaning across the doors of their cars. Fine Gael posters from the election strewn out around their wellington boots. One of the farmers was crunching his boot through a politician’s face. All the Fianna Fáil signs were still up on the lampposts, looking out over the town, but someone had ripped the others down. The town’s not much different, little has changed, a bit like the kitchen. A tawny labrador scrounged around the back of the video shop, nosing his way through the boxes. Inside, two young girls, swamped in bright colours, were staring upwards at the television screens, entranced. Onwards and away, I said to myself. The red tiles on the town lavatory walls hadn’t faded a bit. The smell hit me when I went past – a curious cocktail together with the distant sea.

A couple of drowsy gulls moved up from the sea and over the roofs of the houses.

I rode down along the river, chocolate wrappers floating on the surface, past the old house of the Protestant ladies – I’ve no idea who’s living there now, but it looked a bit tumbledown, a rotting hulk of a car in the gateway. A couple of schoolboys hung around in the entrance, throwing pebbles. They gathered together and started elbowing one another. One of them gave me the middle finger – a new gesture in these parts. Heard a truck rumble behind me, beeping madly, and suddenly the created draft sucked me outwards, almost smacking me into the truck.

But it felt nice to be out and rolling, that song from the shop jumping around in my throat, all the three miles home, the sea getting closer and closer, me never quite reaching it.

A bird had made a nest in the back of an old discarded fridge near the grotto where we used to scrawl our graffiti. Nothing written on the good Virgin these days, although years ago someone scrawled
Man United Rules
across her chest in vibrant red ink, and there were always great jokes going around about Norman Whiteside knocking in a header from Mary Magdalene, and Bryan Robson putting one over on poor Saint Joseph, and nutmegging the good Lord himself. We would sit with our backs against the gate and slurp our bottles, smoke cigarettes in the cups of our hands so the red glow couldn’t be seen from the road. Sometimes there’d be fights in the woods and we’d gather in circles, chant them on. But it seems quiet and litter-free these days, apart from the fridge. I stopped and peered in the big white carcass – thrush eggs sitting on one of the metal racks, down near the vegetable drawer. Twigs wrapped in near the back coil. Some birdshit on the electrical cord. I sat for a while, but a few people stared at me from their cars and I felt a bit strange, got on the bike again. Curious how different the sense of space is here. In Wyoming I can take off and go walking for miles on end without seeing a soul, only a few cattle scrubbing away on the lands, every now and then a horse breaking the hills. Land like that seeps its way into you, you grow to love it, it begins to thump in your blood. But it’s confined here, the land, the space. Doesn’t feel much like mine anymore – it’s like when I’m with the old man, floating around him, not really touching him.

I got used to the skip in the bicycle pedals – a bit like learning to dance with a limp – and I began counting the number of rotations my feet made. Still, it was an effort getting up the hill by O’Leary’s pub. Stopped in to see Mrs O’Leary, but there was only a young boy behind the counter, sipping a glass of red lemonade behind the brand-new mahogany bar, lots of plush red seats roaming around the room, not at all like it used to be when Mam came here in the afternoons and chatted with her about chickens and the like. The bartender told me that Mrs O’Leary had passed away three years before, went in her sleep. Felt my stomach sink, had a quick pint of watery Harp, toasted her vast memory, pedalled on.

I came back to the house, a vision of Mrs O’Leary rolling in my head. I had once seen her dance across her bar-room floor with a chair clutched lovingly to her breast, feet sliding in beerstains and her hair thrown back in red ribbons – she was one of the few people around who made Mam laugh.

All of them going, I thought, all of that wild and leaping world on its way out.

The old man still had that Victrola of Mam’s in the living room, but it must have conked out years ago. I tried to crank it up and play some mariachi music of hers in honour of Mrs O’Leary, but he just laid his head back in the armchair and shook his head, no. He rose up and went to the kitchen, all lopsided with the pain again. He didn’t notice the bags of groceries at the front door. He was going to make himself a cup of instant soup, but, when he lifted the pan off the stove, the boiling water slipped a little. The pan fell down into the sink, toppled over. I heard it gurgling down the drain. He looked at the pan for the longest time, spat down on to it, turned around, saw me.

‘I’ll put on some soup,’ I said.

He ran a hand across his mouth: ‘I can put on the fucken water myself, all right?’ But he didn’t. He brushed past me, back to his armchair. He smelled terrible. This body of his is an effigy, he carts it around on the stick of himself.

I put on the pan – had to wash the spit from the bottom – and made the soup, along with a slice of bread and some butter. He nodded his head, slurped, coughed: ‘I could have done it myself, you know.’ He finished off his soup, left the mug on the floor, and went to wipe his lips with his hanky – it was caked in snot, with a little bit of blood speckled in it. He tucked the hanky away in his trousers pocket and washed his dish.

I took out the packet of Major and threw it on his lap.

‘That’s the last of those,’ I said.

‘Ah, you’re a star, Conor, thanks a million.’

‘I heard Mrs O’Leary’s not around anymore.’

‘Oh, she kicked the bucket a long time ago. Chock-full of whiskey, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘A grand way to go, I suppose,’ he said.

‘I suppose.’

‘Took four bottles down with her.’

‘Took what?’

‘Took four bottles down into the ground with her.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Bushmills.’ He smacked his lips together. ‘Someone went along to the graveyard one night and dug up the fucken coffin.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘Some thirsty bastard,’ he said.

He ran his fist across his mouth. ‘Talking of – is that tea ready yet?’

He sat back and slowly, ritually, banged the bottom end of the packet against his palm, took the plastic wrapper off, turned one of the cigarettes upside-down. ‘For good luck,’ he said. I went upstairs and took a shower, got dressed. Came down and asked him if he was interested in going for a pint in O’Leary’s, but he just sort of laughed at me.

‘What would ya want to hang out with an old fella for?’

I wasn’t about to start arguing. Enough of his self-pity. Before I left I went over to the fire, put on some peat, and ruffled it with the poker. He had some of his fishing flies placed on the stonework, to dry them out. He sat up and said that fishing flies were like good women – they should never be stored away while moist – and laughed away as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

I left him sitting in the chair and went back out on the bike again into the boneblack night.

When I came back from O’Leary’s, he’d collapsed in the chair. His fly was open like a wound and his hands were down by his crotch. His handkerchief was tucked into the nape of his neck. It was as if he’d been about to serve himself, then forgot. In the kitchen I could tell that he’d been pissing in the sink – he hadn’t rinsed it out and there were still two saucers there, one of them with little splotches of yellow on the side. Disgusting. The least he could have done was take out the saucers.

Watched him as he dozed. He raised a hand to wipe something from his eye, maybe some sort of vision, a dream, an absurdity. But I can’t imagine him having dreams anymore. What would he summon up? Maybe something slow and soporific, moving itself into blackness, a slow waltz towards oblivion. Or might it be some secret of technicolour? Who knows? Perhaps life goes out as it once came in – down to the secular brilliance of a single hydrogen atom, imploding back on to itself, the emergence of a songdog on the rim of nothing. A fatuous idea really. Too many pints of Harp in me. Didn’t recognise anyone in O’Leary’s pub, not a single soul, maybe everyone has emigrated. Sat in the corner and flipped a few bar coasters up and down on the table. Plenty of old men in there though, moving their dentures up and down in their mouths, the oval dawns of yellow nicotine stains on their hands.

FRIDAY

god, i was good

Woke up late, feeling a bit nasty. All that Harp. Nectar of the dogs. He gave a laugh when he saw me, went to the cupboard and got out the whiskey.

‘For what ails ya,’ he said.

I took a quick shot and drank a few glasses of water. He upped himself from the table, said he was going to go down to catch his fish. But he must have run out of good flies, because he got out some bait from the very back of the freezer shelf – old shrimp of some sort in a plastic container. Boiled water in a saucepan and placed the tub in the hot water, stood over it, inhaling some of the steam, said it was good for cleaning out his head, that I should try it myself. Every now and then he pushed the container down in the water with his fingers, submerging it, licked at his fingers. They must have been burnt from the hot water, but it didn’t seem to faze him any. He plucked the plastic tub out, said he didn’t have time to wait for the shrimp to thaw, put some of it in his overcoat pocket. Stale shrimp won’t help the smell of him any, I thought, once it unfreezes in his pocket it’ll really stink him to high heaven. Illegal bait, too, but he said he didn’t care, a fish is a fish is a fish, especially if he catches that giant salmon of his.

Took myself off into town on the bike for a bit of breakfast in Gaffney’s hotel. Same old place, yellowing table doilies, ducks in flight on the wall, carpet curling up at the edges, the waft of brewing tea, farmers smoking cigarettes in the corners. Sat at the table nearest the door and read the back page of the
Connaught Telegraph.
Ordered up a big feed with extra sausages. The waitress knew me. Took me a while to remember, but I finally did – Maria from the convent school, cheekbones you could abseil, hair to the waist. I used to blow kisses at her when she walked past the handball alley.

She kept coming over to my table with bits and pieces – butter, marmalade, an extra spoon – until she finally asked me. I wasn’t in the mood for talking, pretended it wasn’t me, put on my best-dressed Wyoming drawl.

Still, nothing better than a few sausages and rashers for a hangover, and I felt like ninety afterwards. Left a pound coin for a tip and she came out running after me, hair flying, said we don’t accept tips in this part of the world. She said she knew it was me all along – the dark skin, I suppose – and smiled.

‘How long are you back for?’ she asked.

Told her about the visa and she said I was lucky, she’d give an arm and a leg to take off herself, she has a brother in Louisiana who shucks oysters, a sister in Washington State doing nursing in a home for geriatrics. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and fooled around with the buttons on my denim jacket. She asked about the old man, said he used to come in for breakfast every Saturday, she hasn’t seen him in a while.

‘Oh, he’s in flying form.’

‘That’s great news altogether.’

She was jangling coins in her apron pocket.

‘Well, I’ll be off,’ I said.

‘Fair enough so. Come in for breakfast on Monday before ya leave.’

‘I will.’

‘It’s on me.’

I walked back home by the riverbank, wheeling the bicycle. Had to detour by the factory, where they’ve raised the barbed wire another few feet in the air, the shouts of men amongst the squeals and the shit and the slurry. Sat down a couple of hundred yards from the factory, in the long grass. Had an urge to just get in and swim, even if the water was disgusting, black as berries, the slow roll of it through the rushes. Took off my t-shirt and trousers, hung them on the brambles of a bush, sat in my underwear, feet dangling in the water. A life of half-emergence. A consistency of acceptance. Enough of the old man’s disease, I thought. This contagion of days, teacups and nods. A vision of Maria rose up in me, a vertigo of lust and genuine longing. Should go back and sweep her off her feet, roll the coins from her apron in my fingers, do something ridiculously romantic for once, carry her off to the beach, ride palominos along the water’s edge, shove ogham stones in our pockets, ride out to sea.

Kowtowed over the riverbank, I decided that I would swim, went into it up to my knees, balanced myself on a few underwater stones, rocked back and forth, and was just about to dive in when I heard a rustle in the bushes near my clothes, maybe a rat or a bird. I got up on to the bank and shook the water from my toes, pulled on my things, walked along towards home, a factory horn ringing out behind me. The old man was there with the familiar routine, and a bitterness sped its way through me as I watched him casting. Something nestled in my stomach and gnawed at me. He lives his life now in the grip of some comfortable anaesthetic.

If I were to choose an anaesthetic myself, I’d probably do what Cici did – have some visions while I’m at it. When I met her, she looked like she could have been grandmother to a hill, but there was a lustful energy in her and the things she remembered. She was living near Castro Street, where all the finest dying in America was done – but Cici wasn’t dying, Cici was her own songdog, Cici was still howling in the creation of other days and places.