We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night

by Joel Thomas Hynes

  Day is breaking over the tips of the trees by the time Johnny sets himself down on a rock not three feet from the river. Cant remember having gotten off the path, if ever he was on one. And the odd notion that’s he’s turned around, been travelling back the way he came. Slumped and staring stupidly at the rushing water, flings a rock into the grey foam collected near the shoreline. Tries to think, tries to conjure up a coherent thought, the seed of some kinda plan. Counts his money. Three hundred twenty and some change. However that happened. Seven hundred bucks’ worth of beef jerky and cigarettes? Drinks on the boat? Fucken hell. He hefts the bag of weed, tries to figure what it might be worth, and where or when in fuck he’ll offload it. Sitting pretty though, when he finds a buyer. Offload the works of it the one time, none of this grams and quarters shit. He’ll know his buyer too, soon as he spots him. Johnny feels for his smokes then, cant hardly believe he’s gone the whole night and never reached once for them. He finds them in his front pants pocket broken and damp, tries to salvage a pinch but then tosses the lot into the river. Cramp in the guts again, Johnny frantically whips the trousers down for the third time in as many hours and squats over the rocks but nothing comes, nothing’s been right since that hot tub fiasco. Joanna. Jesus Christ Johnny youre losing out, losing out.

  See here though Johnny, get yourself outta these woods and make your way down to the Kingston Pen and find some way to get in and visit. Look him in the eye. Let him see who you are. Talk. Maybe make some plans or something. Maybe Johnny could help wrangle up some interest in his case, be Stevie’s man on the outside. Get some decent lawyer handling things, that wrongful conviction crowd who got that banker out of jail. Get Stevie sprung finally. And they’ll have to cut him the big cheque. The big fucken payoff for locking him away without a shred of goddamn evidence. With a witness sayin he was somewhere else. After confessing to an armed robbery for fuck sakes! Come on. Johnny and Stevie rolling in the dough. Maybe get a place together, settle in, be some sort of family. Dysfunctional? Yeah, more than likely. But that’s gettin ahead of yourself now Johnny. Gotta get in somehow first. Walk on into a maximum security pen with no papers or nothing? Filthy as shit with needles and moss and rotted leaves and slimy creature bits. Blood and mystery grease and sweaty road muck caked into your clothes. And they’re gonna throw the gates open for the big father-son reunion? Make no mistake. Gotta figure something, somehow.

  Johnny spies a little overhang, mossy, halfways dry, tucks hisself in under the mound and lays his head against a cool bank of beige sand. Ancient snarl of roots. Something digging into his back but he’s suddenly too shithauled to even adjust his position by an inch to ease the irritation. First ray of sun creeping up the riverbank towards him. The river’s monotony. What was Stevie in for that time, back then? Something no one wanted to talk about, something bad enough, and no fucken armed robbery or none of that shit. Something bad. And then not two years later he’s out for less than six weeks and lands himself a life sentence. For something he never even done. But see how the distinction, the reverence, see how the respect for Johnny fell away once Stevie landed himself a life bit? No threat to nobody no more see. No chance of him gettin out and coming after nobody no more. Smoke and mirrors, the lot of it. Fuck it, Johnny said, chin up, chin up. By that time Johnny could hold his own anyhow. As if there ever was a time he couldnt.

  Johnny slips away to that nowhere gap between sleep and dream, watchin the river through his eyelids, the rocks gurgling, small matted creature eagerly digging in the mud near his shoe. A huge ugly bird, hideous kinda chicken with no feathers on its neck, pecking in the brush below the bank to his right. Radio waves, signals, patterns out there. An older man. Groomed. Important-looking. Receding hair, greying. Spectacled. Walks out of the river. Dry as ash. Stands before Johnny. A dog’s leash and collar strung over his shoulder. Johnny tries to stand, reaches for a knife he used to carry as a child, but the man eases him back down with a subtle sweeping hand gesture. Johnny relaxes. The man calls for his dog, Maddy. Maddy!

  Have you seen her? She’s not quite your height. Dark hair, tattoos on her shoulders? She’s been gone now, gone a good while. She can crawl on her belly across the kitchen floor, for a treat. She took off. She fell in with a hard . . . You think . . . you think you’ll see your own out of harm’s way, that the world might hold off, that what we know will stay that way until the bloodline is settled away at least, until we’re all either on our feet or in the ground. But that’s ego, I guess . . . Maddy!

  The man pulls a bottle of prescription pills from his pocket and rattles them over his head.

  Here girl. Here Maddy. Come get a treat!

  Johnny tries to open his eyes but the man brushes and sweeps at the air with his hand again.

  You keep those closed young man, for as long as you can. All this wont last, you know. We got what, ten, twenty years tops? And then we’ll all starve. Mass starvation, that’s what’s coming, that’s what’ll do it. Who youve been, where youve been, teardrops and case files, none of that will make much difference then, when we’re bashing each other’s skulls in for a sliver of red meat. All you need to sort out is who loves you enough to place themselves beside you in the end. That’s all. That’s what we need to figure out. Maddy! Here girl! Here my girl! Come on get a treat!

  The man drifts on up over the embankment behind Johnny, rattling the pill bottle over his head. He knocks loose some gravel that tumbles down the neckline of Johnny’s coat and Johnny squirms away from a stinging pinprick itch that spreads across his neck and shoulders, and when he comes to and sorts his coordinates he starts in scratching furiously at the side of his face that was settled against the sandy bank. He claws at a scurrying in his hair, flaming little pinches and needle jabs. He roots at something crawling across his ear and finds beneath his fingernail a tiny brown fire ant. Plum-sized burning welts throbbing, screaming, pulsating from down the inside of his neckline all the way to his scalp. Johnny stands with the sun blasting full onto the other half of his face and tries to gauge how long he’s been lying there, the sun high in the sky now. He touches the right side of his face, the side that’s been baking in the sun all morning, well into the afternoon. There is no immediate feeling. Raw suggestive numbness. Johnny staggers over to a docile pool that’s collected behind a rock at the river’s edge, gawps down at his reflection, the one half of his face a distorted swollen chaos of lumpy bites and welts and then a border running perfectly straight down the middle of his face where the other half is a broiled and blistered beet-red sunburnt mess. Johnny drinks greedily from a faster-moving part of the river, fills his belly with icy water, his teeth aching with the shock. When he’s had his bloated fill he splashes water onto his face and grits his teeth against the little girl’s snivel that rises in the back of his throat. Fucken hell Johnny, walk on.

  Seen worse, been through worse, looked worse. Well, maybe aint looked worse, but been a sight out there, no mistake. That time Big Jackie and the lads cornered Johnny outside a party in the Circle, everybody on them speedy bombs that made you wanna chew through the pavement. Everybody except Johnny. Johnny with a few drinks in, and thinkin everything was grand, that it was all settled away, that shit about Big Jackie’s little brother. Johnny hadda give it to him, young Shane, who ran off at the mouth about how the video lotto machines up at the Big Easy were rigged to pay out on a timer. None of his fucken business. Not like he dropped a dime in. And so Johnny hadda set him straight, young Shane. And maybe he went a bit hard on him there, but it’s all about the message. Then Big Jackie shows up home from Renous and it’s this foolish sing-out, retribution and that. But it got sorted, it got sorted. Shiner sorted it. And so Johnny was at that party a couple of months after and here comes Big Jackie and his crew, hopped up on the bombs, lookin to rip Johnny’s face off. Nearly almost did too, no question. Big Jackie hammerin a chess piece, one of the important ones, the king or the queen, into the corner of Johnny’s face. Then Shiner showing up. From somewhere. Crow
bar. Big Jackie, like he was waiting to be told when to stop, hey Johnny? Come to think on it. Fucken hell. Not worth thinkin about is it? Not worth it. Cause youd snap, youd lose your goddamn mind Johnny. If you had a good hard look, sometime, at who’s really who, as opposed to who they says they are, or appears to be. Lose your cocksuckin mind. Shiner prolly arranged the whole scene for fuck sakes. Not worth thinkin about. But Johnny was a sight after that beating. People coming up to him on the street and barely recognizing him. Cheekbone cracked, lip busted open, forehead all purple and yellow, eyebrow stitched back on, fucken detached retina, coulda went blind. A week in hospital. What doesnt kill ya though, like the fella says. Yeah, our John-John’s been a sight. Not like now, this is a different kinda sight. But fuck it, never felt better, truth be told. Out on the highway, few dollars in the pocket, drifting along, free as a bird, on a fucken mission. Never better. Never better. Get yourself hooked into a good run now and see if you cant work out some new duds somewhere. Gavin’s poncho’s warm enough but Johnny’s not traipsing across the whole country lookin like some sorta escaped Mexican convict. Bad enough they might spot him for a Newfoundlander. Some hardy boots we needs, whatever you were thinkin to be hoofin across the country in these old things. You werent thinkin Johnny. You were not thinking. You wore a suit for Christ sakes. Gotta get yourself dolled up for the shitstorm, that’s what. If youre gonna be off wandering in the woods in the middle of nowhere, sleeping in ant banks, youre gonna at least need decent boots, wouldnt you say?

  Fucken Shiner. Bastard. That night after Reddy’s going-away party, down at the Piccadilly, only it had another name on it then. Still, same stretch-marked flabby lap dances though. Scattered time youd even catch a glimpse of a tampon string. More of a laugh, that place. Local talent. See some missus walkin the street sellin ten-dollar blow jobs, some baygirl, and you wonders who she is and then finds out she’s strippin at the Pic too. Go on down for a gawk. They’d all end up workin for Shiner then. Down there that night to toast Reddy’s latest trip to the Big House. Christ, how many going-away parties for that prick? What kinda people goes out and raises their glasses for a fella who’s after beating the living shit out of some old man who had the audacity to wake up while his house was being robbed? Fucken hell. Shiner, yak, yak fucken yakking all night, pinching that girl’s tit like that and you could see she was trying not to cry. But you were laughing and snorting along with the boys all the same Johnny. Fuck off. Shiner chopping out a big line of baby powder and Johnny fool enough to snort the works of it back, nearly fucken blinded himself. Everybody at the bar in on it, laughing. Johnny knocking over a table and breaking a pool cue across Reddy’s back. Reddy booted out of his own party. Come closing time and it’s Johnny and Shiner again, thick as thieves, strolling along the waterfront passing a freezie back and forth, tanked on Slippery Nipple shots and two hits of MDMA. Johnny’s head full of tell-all visions and useless insane cartoon formulas and flashes of some dimwit summer afternoon from back as far as his fuzzy toddler days. Confessions bubbling up everywhere. Blinkered, intricately detailed ideas, brilliant scams and master plans—all gone straight to hell the minute you closes your eyes for the night. Johnny after pissing on his own boot. He hears Shiner grunting and laughing and whooping and searches for him all around the wharf but dont see him nowhere and then finally spots him dangling some fifteen feet above the water swinging two-handed from one of them big fucken mooring ropes attached to some Russian freighter. Shiner, with that fucken epic beard back then, beads and braids and everything dangling from it, shimmying as far up to the boat as he can and then sliding back to the wharf again, laughing at Johnny for not being able to handle his booze and dope. And then Johnny, the fool, on the rope, shimmying along, Shiner roaring from the wharf, goading him on. And Johnny’s made a mental note how far up the rope Shiner got, how close to the boat he came, and that’s the mark Johnny’s gonna beat.

  Smouldering death in Johnny’s shoulder muscles and forearms. Palms of his hands cramped and stiffening from holding up his own weight. The cold, noxious stink of the open harbour water beneath him. Dangling there. Three, two feet from the mark, from Shiner’s best. And then a jagged tremor shooting up through the rope and down through Johnny’s wrists, elbows, into his tight, dead back muscles. The rope swaying back and forth, back and forth, Shiner laughing all high-pitched and psychotic. Johnny shouting at him to stop, Hold the fuck off Shine, come on! And if it was anybody else Johnny’d be making all kinds of threats but instead he finds himself hollering as if it’s all a bit of late-night fun and he’s not hanging fifteen feet above the filthiest body of water in North America. He tries to wrap his legs around the rope and misses the grip and one of his sneakers falls and slaps against the surface of the water and vanishes. His arms useless and worsening. Tryna shimmy back as close to the wharf as he can get before he falls, cause he knows he’s gonna fall. Catches a glimpse of Shiner’s coked-out drunken sneer and knows full well he aint gonna take no pity on Johnny this night.

  Hope you can swim Johnny my son, hope you can fucken swim! Ha!

  Johnny finally managing to hook his legs around the thick rope and at the same moment his arms giving way and he’s hanging there not knowing where or how he’s got the rope gripped, scrounging and flailing to get his hands back around it, feeling stupid, passed over, Shiner’s shrill laughter echoing up the harbourfront, and half a second later comes the gummy black harbour stew. No word to describe the taste, the texture, putrid clogging rot in the sinuses. Fresh decay. Dense gritty sludge. What dont go through your mind? How many toilets flushed down into this even in the past hour? Two hundred thousand pisses and shits. Used frenchies and flushable tampons. Poison stuff from the bottoms of cans and containers. Filthy fuckers taking baths and showers and washing arse sweat and scum from the folds of their bodies. Runoff from the abortion clinics. Fucken dead bodies even, people gone missing. Whatever they drains out of folks’ bodies in the morgue after they dies, hospital waste. All stirred up into one big hepatitis soup. And Johnny down in it. Johnny down in it. As suddenly sober as a man gets. Some heavy senseless sunken thing, firm but mushy, bumping Johnny’s hand as he gropes for a way to the surface. And what else goes through your mind? Once youve taken on the fact that it’s in your ears, settling behind your eyelids, seeping into that cut on your knuckle, that it’s up your nose and in your mouth and that you think you mighta swallowed a teaspoon or two, breathed it down into your lungs? What dont go through your mind? That fella a few years back who fell off a longliner one drunken night and hadda go in quarantine for six months, healthy as a horse and then afterwards all kinds of trouble with his lungs, skin problems, scabs that wont heal. Divers who goes down cutting ropes tangled in the propellers of boats who comes up with their lips all broke out in sores. Christ almighty. What goes through your head is if I lives through this, if the cold dont get me or if I dont suffocate down here, then my life is never gonna be the same anyhow. I’ll never be the same again. Better off if I dont make it out, better off. But then you makes it out, Johnny. You makes it out. Clawing your way up that scum-ridden iron ladder, hands and feet numbed out, trying not to open your eyes or breathe. Hauling yourself over the mooring and rolling onto your back, hearing yourself moan, calling for Shiner. Shiner! Lookin around and he’s nowhere to be seen. How he musta took off lookin for help, he must be gone lookin for a phone, a cop, an ambulance, blankets, a few lads to help fish him out. Shiner! And then the cold really setting in. Middle of March, snowing earlier. A different kind of burning cold, your neck seizing up. Johnny on his feet, sopping wet with chunks of harbour sludge in his hair and caked into all his creases, limping and shivering wildly towards the giggly rumble of George Street with the one sneaker on and the shirt plastered to his frame, the jeans glistening, painted on, the cold. That cop next to Ziggy Peelgood’s, lookin Johnny up and down and whistling, pointing him towards an ambulance that was pushing its way through the drunken chaos towards Christian’s Pub. Johnny mumbling to th
e paramedic, about the harbour, the toxic stuff, the cold. The paramedic askin Johnny to step aside. Please sir, step aside, we’re on an emergency call. Johnny pleading. How sick am I gonna get? Shouldnt I be going to a hospital? I’m gonna freeze. The paramedic not lookin at Johnny, propping up some drunk little MUN dolly whose gut was bursting out of her blouse. Johnny at the cab stand outside CB’s sayin he’s got no money, askin the cabbie to take him up over the hill, take him to the hospital. The cabbie locking all the doors and staring straight ahead. Johnny wandering onto Water Street begging to use someone’s mobile, for someone to please call an ambulance, Someone please gimme a quarter for the love of fuck I just fell into the harbour I’m gonna freeze, I’m gonna get sick and fucken die! Come on! The crowd backing off, backing away, girls squealing. This drunken fool with one sneaker on, soaked to the bone, shivering with chunks of shit falling to the pavement all around him.

  Two weeks later down at the East End Club and Shiner is tellin the tale, how he climbed down the ladder and grabbed Johnny by the shirt collar and dragged him up outta the harbour. How Johnny woulda been a fucken goner. Johnny sat at the other end of the bar, still feeling the chill, nodding, grinning. Watchin fuckers buy Shiner drinks.