Songdogs

by Colum McCann

  The old man sat in the seat behind them, amazed by America moving past. He kept his face glued to the window, fingered his cameras.

  By the time they hit Boise, my mother was so dehydrated that not even Cici’s rouge could help her. They booked into a hotel room, stayed for thirty-six hours while Mam recovered. Cici hovered by the bed and talked about Delhart. He was a brown-bearded brute of a man with pellucid eyes. In particular she remembered his hands – huge boats with dirt under his fingernails. She had thought of those hands often after she went west to see the Pacific – they sometimes caressed her at night in her imagination. She had met him after a fire; he had come up to her lookout one evening and ended up spending the night, loving her, afterwards coughing up reams of smoky phlegm into the pillow.

  From Boise they hitched a lift on the back of a pick-up truck and my mother began to feel better, the open air rushing over her, the fevers cooling down, a world settling itself in her stomach. Cici, sitting beside her, feet over the tailgate, stared out at the passing of Idaho: ‘Why don’t you guys come stay with me for a day or two? I’m not up in my tower until next week.’ During the night the pick-up sidled its way to the edge of the Tetons, up narrow switchbacked roads, through forests of fir trees, over huge passes where red-tailed hawks were gliding. They huddled together in the freezing cold, under blankets. Cici lit up a cigarette, twisted at the blade of grass on her finger.

  Delhart met them in the morning outside a café in Jackson Hole. The ranger had a scar on his face the shape of a horse’s hoof. He kicked at imaginary pebbles. ‘I’ve something to tell you, Cici.’ He waved my parents off, took Cici’s hand and guided her towards a café with elk antlers on the wall, ordered coffee. Delhart told her that he’d met a Ute Indian woman, he’d been afraid to tell her in any letters. The woman was pregnant. He said they could adopt the child, raise it themselves. Cici leaned back in her chair, watched the sweat that came from Delhart’s brow, slowly, in drips down to his chin. ‘What is she? A goddamn postman or something? Pony goddamn Express?’ ‘What d’ya mean?’ said Delhart. The coffee landed very neatly on his green shirt. ‘You’re an asshole,’ Cici said, ‘don’t come near me.’ She stirred her coffee as Delhart left, looked at her hands as if they didn’t belong to her anymore.

  That afternoon Cici, deciding that she wanted to visit her tower in the mountains, borrowed a truck and some keys from another ranger. While my father slept in a hotel at the outskirts of town, Cici and Mam drove down long, winding dirt roads together. Mam sat in beside her, leaning over, comforting her. ‘I’m all right,’ said Cici. ‘It don’t bother me none.’ The wind rushed through open windows, already threatening fire with its dryness.

  Cici carried a jug of wine as they hiked up the five miles to the lookout tower, said nothing as she climbed, a long green stare from her. My mother trudged behind in a pale yellow dress, up the mountain, around frost-veined boulders, along dirt trails making narrow canyons in the light-shafting trees. They moved up towards the treeline, passed a few remaining snowbanks, stopped together to catch their breath as Cici burst into laughter. ‘I don’t give a shit about him, he’s an asshole.’ Cici was whistling to scare any bears that they might stumble upon. She stopped whistling when they hit the edge of some scree, no longer threatened, and slowly negotiated the boulders towards the summit.

  It was an astounding place for Mam to see – snow on the northern faces of the mountains, the sweep of green underneath, eagles on the thermals, no dust for miles.

  The tower, a small grey building, was perched on the top of the mountain like a bird ready to explode into flight. A lightning rod stuck up, an obscenity in the air. The rotten carcass of a baby deer lay not too far from a rusting water trough. The door of the tower creaked when they entered, and the air was heavy with must. They sat together, lotus-legged on the floor, wrapped in old mangy blankets, wine passing between them. No clouds in the sky to hold the heat in, they shivered in the cold. ‘I don’t give a shit,’ said Cici again. ‘I don’t give a shit about him, sometimes people just ain’t what they seem, you dream them up for yourself, then – shit, I don’t care.’

  She was plucking at the long strands of hair that fell down over her face, rocking back and forth, her knees to her chest. Her eyes fixed on a spider web, insects caught within it. It moved slightly in the cold breeze that came through the open door. Cici rose and closed it, flicked at the web with her fingers. ‘I never gave a shit about him.’ The wine went down and later on, while Mam was sleeping, Cici’s body was a rhyme, a singular rhyme that slipped its way out of the tower, walked across some scattered rocks, down to the water trough, tripped her way to the edge, drunk, stumbling against the metal sides. She stared down into the water and, reeling with alcohol, chuckled.

  She swept insect larvae from the surface of the water, kicked her shoes off, placed her socks neatly in them, laid her hands on either side of the trough, swung her body across and climbed in, felt the coldness through her legs, her spine, her hands, the water sloshing around the edges, some drops jumping out to the ground. She moved in the water, watched the creation of ripples, and then propped her feet and elbows on the edge, lay there, chuckled again – ‘I don’t give a shit’ – watched the night, the stars rioting away, the moon a heap in the west moving towards morning, felt the water weigh her clothes down, the larvae fondling her hair, some fireflies flicking luminescence from their bellies around her, and she laughed as she sat in the tub of rainwater, waiting to freeze to death.

  Dawn had left some freckles in the sky and it could have been the most peaceful morning in the world when Mam woke up, indolent birds on the thermals and the insects busy at the ends of long grass stalks and the sun moving itself into yellowness beyond the edge of the lookout. She came out of the tower to yawn off a hangover and saw Cici’s body, arms and legs draped over the water trough, blue. ‘¡Carajo!’ Cici’s face looked like it might have been prepared for a mass card. Her lips were set into something approximating a smile. The black hair flared out from the whiteness of the skin. The insect larvae had settled now and they clung to her legs, to her thighs. Mam reached in. The water was oily as it lapped up against the trough.

  In Mexico she had once picked up the body of a dead bird, amazed at how light the bones were. She reached under Cici’s languid back. You are so light, she thought. Mam propped her hands under the shoulders and began to lift Cici out, the feet languishing behind in the trough, propped up on the edge. Mam tugged again. The feet fell, hard and lifeless, against the ground. She dragged Cici back to the tower. A small cut opened between the toes. Mam looked around the tower, frantic. No radio. She laid Cici down on the floor, took off the wet cothes, wrapped blankets around her cold cold body, put her fingers in under the blankets and rubbed her heart, where there was still a faint slow thumping. Her hands moved furiously, penitently. Mam took off her own clothes and covered Cici with them, put some socks on Cici’s feet. ‘Michael!’ The shout to my father echoed around the mountains. Nothing stirred. ‘¡Por Dios!’ The carcass of the deer rolled up in her mind. She took Cici’s hands and placed her fingers in her mouth. For a long time she sucked on the fingers, until she saw the first stir, the head moving sideways a little. Come on. She fitted as many fingers as possible in her mouth, let the warm saliva roll over them, the nails with the calcium marks – when she was a child she had been told that calcium marks, when they rose to the top of the nails, were a sign that she would get a gift. With Mam’s tongue down by the lifeline of the hand, Cici moved again.

  Mam scoured her hand over Cici’s ribcage – my father had told her of the famine in Ireland where once a man and his wife had been found frozen to death by the hearth of an empty fire. The woman’s feet were frozen to the man’s breastbone where he had tucked them under his shirt to warm them. It was as if they had been nailed there. Mam, her mouth dry, rose up, took the blankets and rubbed them over Cici’s body. ‘Michael!’ Cici’s fingers were moving now, slowly against each other, as if counting
money. Mam leaned up and whispered things in her ear. She suddenly noticed how grey and bare the tower was, but it was still too cold to drag Cici outside. The sun wasn’t high enough. ‘Come on!’ She took Cici’s head in her hands and the head lolled as if broken. There were acne marks on Cici’s chin and tiny hairs that stuck out like the needles of conifers. The mouth moved within the pockmarks and Mam went furious again with the blankets. Cici mumbled something and my mother leaned down and left a dry kiss on her forehead.

  ‘You will be all right.’

  Keep her warm. Talk to her until the sun rears up further. Try to find some food. ‘Michael!’ Cici began to move a little more, to almost laugh, tiny exhausted gollops.

  From somewhere very far away, down the mountain, came a faint shout. Mam clasped Cici’s stockinged feet, rubbed warmth into them. A curious thing occurred as Cici’s eyes opened wider – a swarm of giant brown butterflies flocked out from the trees below them, all of them in unison, one giant dun sheet that ran its way through the forest, thousands of them at once, barrelling out, into the trees and upwards again, their wings pounding their slender bodies. My mother attributed it to some sort of miracle – there was always a deep need for miracles, she thought. Cici later put it down to the simple vagaries of nature – the butterflies had obviously been flushed from their habitat by an animal in the trees, a threat of some sort, a natural phenomenon.

  When my father came up the path with Delhart, half an hour later, he carried a jug of wine. He was amazed to see Mam naked, rocking back and forth in the sunlight, with Cici beside her, under the blankets, dressed in Mam’s clothes. A washing line was strung up between pine poles, and Cici’s garments flapped, animated in the breeze. ‘What happened?’ said Delhart to my mother. My mother gave him a vicious look, turned and stared at my father. ‘An accident happened, Michael.’ Her voice quivering.

  Cici looked up from the bed of blankets. ‘Oh, it’s the lover boys.’

  The old man sat down on the ground and took his hat off, left it beside Cici. Delhart went away, down the mountain, without a word, carrying the wine. Mam went over to the washing line and put on Cici’s dress.

  ‘I am staying,’ she said to my father. ‘I am staying here until she’s better. And don’t ask me for changing my mind.’

  * * *

  Old Father Herlihy didn’t recognise me in the Spar. He was in buying a packet of cigarettes, flirting with the girl behind the counter. ‘And how’s the studying coming along?’ he was saying, a glint in his eye. She looked like one of the O’Meara girls, dollops of freckles on her cheeks. Father Herlihy has put on a bit in the girth, it was propped out over his trousers, mashing against the buttons of his thin black shirt. He was shaking absentmindedly in his black jacket pocket for some matches. The counter-girl gave him a smile and took out a box from the side of the register: ‘Don’t worry about it, Father, they’re on the house.’ Out he walked, smiling, straight past me without a second glance. He left fifty pence on the counter and she was in a right tizzy for a moment. She shoved it in her pocket and started looking at her nails, bits of red polish on them. Turned up the radio and smiled at me: ‘I love this song,’ she said. I must admit it wasn’t too bad – felt like slamdancing through the washing powder myself. Filled up five bags of groceries, put three of them in the front basket, hung one on either side of the handlebars.

  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 t
he 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.’