by Declan Burke
‘No, it’s Rollerskate Skinny.’
He gave it about ten seconds. ‘That’s pants,’ he declared.
‘Give it a chance. Any Sprite left?’
‘It’s gone.’
‘Greedy shite. What’s left to eat?’
He snorted back a giggle. ‘Nothing.’
‘It’s all gone? The whole sack?’
He nodded, on the verge of more giggles.
‘Christ,’ I said, ‘you must have hollow legs.’
Which was when it all finally clicked into place. Haunted by Finn, maybe, a flashback to bombing along in his Audi, Horsedrawn Wishes up full blast. Finn with his window down and a fat spliff drifting sparks in the breeze.
I glanced across at Ben and saw Finn grinning up at me, a fun-loving kid with gaunted eyes and a life sucked dryer every time he drew on a jay. Saw greyish globs spitting, frying, on the cab’s skeletal frame.
Saw what I should already have seen. Or might have seen, had I been around to see.
Maybe. I’m not really the noticing type.
Right there I decided it was time to swing in behind Dee. Until now I’d been feeding her the line that it was best for Ben if I stayed at arm’s length, so he wouldn’t get teased and maybe bullied and one day tainted for being the son of an ex-con. But that was horseshit. The truth being that I was really trying to achieve some kind of retrospective exoneration if Ben lucked out and became a fuck-up too.
Besides, Ben already knew I’d been away doing time. Some day, it was inevitable, he’d find out why, and for who. When he did he’d make his own decisions about what and who was right and wrong, and maybe then he’d come to the same conclusion I had. That dad by default was better than no dad at all, for both of us.
If he didn’t, he didn’t. But until then I’d do whatever it took.
I switched off the stereo. ‘Ben?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘How long have you been smoking dope?’
He denied it, naturally. I’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t. But he blushed to the bone and wouldn’t meet my eye. We shouted for a bit, Ben shrill and defensive, but as a mismatch we were up there with Kong and Fay Wray.
‘You’re half the time zonked,’ I said. ‘Grades sliding off the map. Eating your own weight in munchies and giggling like a girl on a wonky swing.’
A sullen snort.
‘Ben, man – you’re twelve.’
‘So?’
‘So get that fucking look off your face or I’ll smack it off.’
He rearranged his features into something pale and hollowed, stared straight ahead.
‘How long?’ I said.
‘How long what?’
‘How long have you been smoking?’
He shrugged. ‘Couple of months.’
‘How much?’
‘Dunno.’
‘One a day? Five? How much?’
‘Depends.’
‘No. It used to depend. Now it doesn’t depend so much because you’ve smoked your last joint.’
No answer. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘How am I going to stop you?’ He shifted in his seat, hunching a shoulder to hide the sly grin twitching in the corner of his mouth. ‘Easy,’ I said. ‘I go to the cops, tell them some fucker’s selling my kid drugs at school.’
‘Dad—’
‘That way, everyone’ll know it was you who squealed. Yeah? Who’ll sell you dope after that? And unless things’ve changed since I was in school, you’ll be due a kicking or three as well. Am I right?’
His shoulders quivered. ‘It’s not like I’m smoking it every day,’ he said. A quavering note in his voice.
‘I don’t give a shit about what it’s not like. From now on, it’s out. Jesus, Ben, it’s a gateway drug.’
‘Chill, Dad. I know what—’
‘You haven’t a fucking clue, Ben. And tell me to chill again, and I’ll chill you. You hear me?’
‘Jesus,’ he muttered, ‘it’s only a few smokes. It’s not like I killed anyone.’
For a split-second I froze. ‘What’d you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You said something,’ I said, ‘about not killing anyone.’
He shrugged, edged away from me. His Adam’s apple bobbing hard. ‘It’s only dope, dad.’
A throwaway remark? Or did he know?
Either way, he was right. I softened my tone. ‘I know what I’m talking about, Ben. You think you’re the first kid who ever smoked some weed?’
An up-and-under glance from behind the fringe, quizzical. Honesty being the most shocking policy, I went the whole hog. ‘Yeah, I smoked it too.’ This time I ladled on the past tense. ‘And I’m telling you it’s a gateway drug. I started off smoking hash and wound up smoking sixty cigarettes a day.’ I left out the speed, E, acid, poppers, coke, shrooms and PCP. I had a feeling I’d need another shock or two up my sleeve in the years to come.
‘Cigarettes aren’t real drugs,’ he said.
‘They’ll kill you all the same.’
‘Yeah, but I mean—’
‘They’re not illegal, sure. But just in case there’s any confusion, here’s the way it is. If I catch you smoking hash again, I’ll break your fucking fingers to stop you rolling up. Are we clear?’
Over the top, maybe, but it had the desired effect. He slumped back in his seat, shocked at the ferocity of the threat. His skin so pale it seemed to glow in the gathering dusk. Once in a while he’d sniffle, then wipe his nose with a defiant slash, sleeve tugged down across his wrist. After a while, in a small voice, he said, ‘Are you going to tell mum?’
‘Tell her? I’m going to have to move back in with her.’
A half-choked giggle. He looked across at me, eyes huge and watering, hopeful.
‘Tell you what I’m going to do,’ I said. ‘This once, this one time only, I’m giving you an amnesty. You know what an amnesty is?’ He nodded, which was something of a thunder-stealer. ‘Okay, so the amnesty is that I don’t tell your mother, I don’t go to your school, I don’t blow the whistle to the cops. Now you tell me, what’re you going to do?’
He gulped it out. ‘Not smoke hash.’
‘Correct. I mean, Ben, if you keep smoking that crap, football’s out. Forget about it. Your lungs haven’t even formed properly yet. Sucking that shit down, you’ll cripple yourself. You know hash is ten times more cancerous than cigarettes, right?’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they never tell you the downside. Then there’s the mental problems.’
‘I never even had a bad dream,’ he said.
‘Not yet, maybe. But they’ve done studies into the long-term effects of smoking dope. Know what they found?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do they. And I don’t know about you, but that scares the shit out of me.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t have any effect.’
I admired his guts, the way he wasn’t taking it lying down. But he had to learn. ‘I knew this guy,’ I said, ‘he was chilled, like you’d say. Nice guy, friendly. Liked a smoke. Guy was rich, had a good-looking girlfriend, no problems.’
‘So?’
‘He jumped off nine stories for no reason anyone can see. Last night. You’re sitting in his car right now.’
That got him. ‘Remember the crime scene earlier?’ I said. ‘I was there when it happened. The guy hit so hard he looked like a dwarf after. Smashed every bone in his body. It’ll be in the paper tomorrow, look out for it. His name was Finn Hamilton.’
‘He jumped because he was on hash?’
‘This is what I’m saying. No one knows why he jumped. But yeah, he smoked a lot of grass, for years. And I don’t care what it is you’re taking, acid or fucking bran flakes, you do something for years, it’s going to have an effect. You want to turn out a mentaller?’
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
He didn’t speak for half an hour. I let him stew, cranked up the stereo, let Rollerskate Skinny take us home. We came
off the Tubbercurry bypass and I’d just dug out the makings to roll a smoke when my phone rang, caller ID flashing Dee-Dee-Dee.
I handed the half-rolled cigarette to Ben, picked up.
‘Dee?’
‘Where are you, Harry?’
‘Right now I’m on a bad stretch for talking on the phone. I’ll buzz you back in ten.’
‘Are you far away?’
‘Twenty minutes, depending on traffic.’
I hung up. Ben, sucking in his cheeks to suppress the smile, handed me the cigarette already rolled and roached. I shook my head, then grinned and sparked it up. Rollerskate Skinny adding a touch of melancholy with ‘Bell Jars Away’, Ken Griffin plaintive, this motionless ease, measure me by …
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How this amnesty works is this. You’ll know by the time you’re eighteen if you have what it takes to make it. I mean as a footballer. If you haven’t been scouted by then, you never will. Plus, with your grades back up, you’ll probably be heading off to college, where it’s practically the law you have to smoke dope.’
‘Really?’
‘No. Look, Ben – what I’m saying is that from now on, and until you’re old enough to get your shit together, I’m on your case. Hear me? I’ll be dropping by regular, checking you out. And you can’t kid a kidder. I’ll know. Trust me. I’ll be checking for hot-spots, smelling your clothes, making it so fucking hard it won’t be worth your while smoking. And if I get the faintest whiff that you might even be thinking about having a toke, I’ll be off to the cops, dobbing your mates in. How’s that?’
He wasn’t happy, but if he hit eighteen still hating me I’d figure I’d done a half-decent job.
‘Mum doesn’t have to find out?’
‘It’s a clean slate, Ben, but it’s a one-time offer. Screw up again and you’re fucked. She’ll send you away to military school. In Gdańsk. Christ!’
The phone ringing again. Dee-Dee-Dee. The road had straightened up, the long run down towards the Collooney roundabout that was there but already invisible in the gloom. I picked up.
‘I’ll be there in ten fucking minutes, okay? Chill.’
Ben sniggered. I cocked an eyebrow at him, and that was all it took.
Hard to say looking back, but if I hadn’t been juggling Dee, the phone, steering wheel and a cigarette, then maybe I’d have seen it coming. Maybe if I had readjusted the rear-view mirror when the sun finally went down I’d have caught more than a blur in my peripheral vision. Maybe if I hadn’t let myself be distracted by Ben’s snigger.
Maybe, maybe, maybe …
The world shunted ten feet to the right, the Audi shivering like a harpooned whale as it veered onto the hard shoulder. I dropped phone and cigarette, yanked hard on the wheel. Swerved back on line, clipping the white reflector poles marking the grass verge. Then a pole flickered up over the bonnet to smash the windscreen, glaze it milky.
The wheels on the left skidding out, sliding away on the grass verge. A steep slope beyond, a narrow gully.
I think Ben might have been screaming. My last lucid thought was, O Christ, it’s going to kill him too.
Then someone buried an axe in the equator. The car flipped over, seemed to hang upside down, poised in mid-air.
We hit with a crunch, the screech of metal rending, the harsh splintering of glass. The someone buried the axe in my skull. The world split in two.
20
Most Irish cops, freshly minted, are sent to Dublin once they leave Templemore. The idea being, if you can handle the Dublin streets anywhere else will be a doddle. If you grew up in Dublin, they’ll probably send you to Limerick. Same idea, more knives.
The last place they’ll send you is home, the theory being that you’re far less likely to be bribed, corrupted, threatened or inclined to turn a blind eye if you’re parachuted into a place where you know no one and no one knows you, or your family.
This also applies to the judiciary.
Why it doesn’t apply to the politicians is anyone’s guess. Maybe they’re born of nobler stuff than cops and judges.
Anyway, the theory is sound, but in practice it has its drawbacks. For one, it promotes a them-and-us mentality, which means most young cops pick up their local knowledge from other cops, which in turn means that one cop’s personal experience can filter down through the years into a prejudice against a particular individual or family, and become a self-perpetuating myth.
The fact that such prejudice is generally hard-earned and well-deserved is neither here nor there.
The cop stationed outside the door of my room, Pamela reckoned, was nervous. Not because he knew me, but because the only things he did know about me were that I’d done time for killing my brother and was liable to embark on a homicidal frenzy when I woke to discover that the hospital corners on my sheets weren’t sharp enough to shave with.
So Pamela said. I didn’t have the strength to check the colour of the sheets, let alone the quality of the corners.
I’d woken drenched in sweat to a world that was shorter and narrower than when I went away. The ceiling lower, pressing down. For a second I’d thought I was back in my cell, that it’d all been another dream. But the sheets felt crisp.
Then came a muted beep.
I sensed rather than smelled the cloying blanket of antiseptic warmth. A tube in my arm, the bag of clear fluid suspended high above my head. Beneath that a bedside locker, and on top of that a jug of water, a plastic beaker standing sentry, half-full.
My throat felt like it was growing cacti for fun. I reached for the beaker and—
Bad mistake.
I’d been booby-trapped, some sadistic fiend laying in tiny coils of molten razor-wire just below the skin. Ripped free, they sent an agonising jolt whiplashing out from under my left eye, all the way down through my shoulder and into my left elbow.
I lay there panting hot and raw. Sweat or tears or something acid burning my right eye.
I must have grunted.
‘You’re awake.’ She swam into view with a swish of starch, her shoes all a-squeak on a floor carpeted with orgasmic mice. She tried for severe but she was too surprised to make it work. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Shit.’ A croak. ‘How’s Ben?’
‘He’s fine. Do you want a drink?’
I nodded. Another bad mistake. My head felt like a balloon going over an underwater falls. The wooziness spiralled away down my spine, became a whirlpool. She held the beaker to my lips. ‘Sip at it,’ she said.
It took a combination of Napoleonic ambition and Puritan masochism, but I managed three sips. It was warm and tasted faintly of dust and something antiseptic but as it trickled down my throat the cacti blossomed into a field of damp buttercups, gleaming. She took the beaker away. ‘Are you in pain?’ she said.
‘Ben.’
‘You need to rest.’ It was an order rather than advice. ‘You’ve suffered a trauma to the—’
‘Ben.’
She was smaller than I remembered, stretching on tip-toe to reach around and plump the pillows. A faint whiff of the cinnamon gum she favoured. Up close her eyes were no less hypnotic than they’d been the last time we’d been that close, although I’d have remembered them more fondly if they’d met mine when she spoke about Ben.
‘He’s fine, Harry. Stable, in no danger.’
An entirely practical woman, Pamela Burns. Efficient and cynical and not given to overtly feminine ploys. At least, that’s how she looked from a distance, petite and largely unremarkable and unconcerned with convincing strangers otherwise. But if you were to jog her elbow at a crowded bar – Fiddlers, say – and spill some of the three G&Ts she was carrying away onto her wrist, and she was to glare up at you with those round brown eyes flecked with a kind of green mica, the crown of her head just about level with your chin, and she was to say something harsh that you didn’t hear because the music was too loud and you’d had two pints too many, and were already perning in the gyre of those eyes, round as moons and exerting
roughly the same gravity – well, you get the gist.
It had ended badly between us, but then such things end badly or they don’t end at all. Sligo being the size it is, we’d bumped into one another a couple of times afterwards, and a détente had been established, one that had thawed a little when Ben arrived – I’d met her the night he was born, staggering out into a shiny new world as she came on for the early shift – and later became a fully fledged truce, and we the battle-scarred veterans not quite capable yet of sharing our war stories, when she got married herself and had two kids, boys or girls I could never remember.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d gone away, and now here she was, a thumb on my pulse. Her fingers felt cool and dry and somehow essential.
Slowly, very slowly, I raised my right hand to my face and touched fingertips to my left eye. It felt swollen and gauzy. Above the swelling where my eye should have been I came upon a soft wadding. An eye-patch of sorts.
‘Where is he?’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Ben.’
‘Ben’s fine,’ she said again. Her gaze flickered away as she tugged a sheet corner straight. ‘And you need to relax and get some rest. You really shouldn’t be awake yet.’
‘Sure. Okay.’
She plucked a pen from her breast pocket and moved away to the bottom of the bed, unhooked the chart. The sip of water sloshed around greasily as I threw back the sheet, slid out. She glanced up in time to see me pluck the tube from my arm. A three-inch needle came away too. Spots of blood spattered the sheet, Pollock-style, but Pamela had never been a fan of abstract expressionism.
‘Harry! What the fuck are you—’
‘Where is he?’
She backed away to the door. ‘You can’t leave,’ she said. She was firm on the principle although her voice was a bit shaky. I was still holding the tube, the needle pointing at her. I put it down on the bed.
‘Where’s my clothes?’
‘It’s not me who’ll be stopping you,’ she said. She put a hand behind her and twisted the handle, and I realised she wasn’t checking her escape route but ensuring it was still locked. This was when she told me about the cop stationed outside. There were more downstairs, waiting for me to wake up so they could take a blood-level reading.
