Come Christmas though, I was all bent outta shape about what to get her, then me and a buddy got our hands on a video camera and he taped me while I smashed out all the windows to that shop. Great big six-by-six picture windows and me with the fucken mason bricks over me head and slamming em in onto the floor amongst the guitars and amps. I had a mask on too, but then I walks right up to the camera when I’m done with the windows and the alarm blaring in the background and I hauls the mask up past me eyebrows, looks right into the camera and says Merry Christmas little mama. Christmas morning she opens her card and finds the little DVD in there, gives it a spin, and dont her lovely face light up once she figures out what’s going on. Fucken hell. Johnny, now here’s that same girl caked in under your fingernails, egging you on to swipe a pair of fucken cargo pants from a goodwill shop. Or, maybe, more likely, once a rogue always a fucken rogue, hey Johnny? Maybe it’s as simple as that. The leopard and his spots. Or maybe it’s that youre wanting to get found out too Johnny, maybe youre . . . ahhh fuck off.
Coming to, stiff and cramped and cold after crashing the night in the passenger seat of the old Ford. Springs from the seat jabbing into his shoulder. Still and all, likely the soundest snooze Johnny’s had now since . . . fucken . . . Anyhow, not the first time he bunked out in a wreck, no sir. Booted out of Pius’s house so often, or too spiteful to come home. Slept a whole week one time up in the Tuckers’ woodshed, right there on top of the junks. No more than twelve or thirteen. So an old Ford is like the penthouse suite now aint it, depending on your reference point. Woke up once, the whole night. Dreaming shit. Other than that, hardly budged from the moment he shut his eyes, and here the sun is well into the sky now, must be going on nine, half past. Madonna in the front pouch of the poncho, safe and sound. Bag of weed stashed down in the abandoned den of some dead creature. Well you cant risk keeping it on your person or in the goddamn rig in the seat alongside. Never know but some dipshit lawdog could come along in the middle of the night sniffing about. Never know but you were spotted beating around the bushes after you left the front gates. Likely cameras around the perimeter anyhow. Cameras fucken everywhere these days, even in the woods.
Yeah, woke up the one time last night. Got out and had a little look around the woods, a listen, tryna work out this dream and at the same time tryna shake it off. Black snaking patterns. Thick, clogging stink of hot tar, dump trucks and graders, steamroller. It was the pavement, wasnt it? The day they paved the roads in the harbour. I mean, the dream was pretty vague and wonky, feelings, smells, and likely it only lasted two or three seconds. But that’s what they says about dreams anyhow, how they feels a thousand times longer than they are. You could have this big old epic dream with all these twists and turns and details, and the telling of it takes five or six minutes, but in reality they says the dream takes place in a split fucken second. The details are just triggered memories or something, your mind tryna rationalize, sort things out in real time. What a load of shit. Still and all, they paved the roads one day, all the little back roads and side roads that used to be gravel and potholes. Big gang of us up on the hill lookin down on the harbour, watchin the colour of the roads change, waiting on our bikes, waiting for the machines to hurry up and fuck off back where they came from so we could take over. Like the real world came to town, or we stepped up a couple of rungs on the ladder or some such shit. The roads all led to the same shithole spots, same ragtag houses, same dead ends. But they were smoother werent they? Mikey sitting out on his step with the clunky cast on his leg pretty much that whole summer while the rest of us whipped around the harbour flying ramps. Poor sook.
That’s the summer his father brought home them hens Johnny?
Shut it, fucken shut it about them hens.
Big stretch. Dog barking. Kids whooping it up somewhere. Be nice to scrounge up a cuppa tea. Piss. Crows squawking. Starved, fucken famished. Mass starvation, hey Johnny? Cant remember when was the last time I sat down and ate something with a fork. Big old feed of eggs and toast and bacon, hey Johnny. That’d be nice round about now. One of them mornings, that’s what I wants. One of them peaceful and dopey mornings, no past, like you just arrived here, only now showed up in the world in this form. No ghosts clinging to you, no luggage weighing you down, the heavens still deciding what species youre gonna be. The way the sound leaps around, the way the head settles right down, nothing racing, nothing urgent. Ahhh but even if you could get there Johnny, even if you could shake it all for a time, you knows it dont fucken last. The old heart dont be long skipping a beat when you thinks on the day ahead, walking in through that jailhouse and laying eyes on your blood father for the first time in your life.
Well, they says minimum security and by fuck they means it. Never even asked me for ID or nothing, never searched me. I could be packing all kinds of dope or a blade or anything. Hardly even glanced at me, lookin like I do with the face all scrabbled up. Signed a disclosure agreement and then I was told to wait in this indoor-outdoor shabby cafeteria kinda room with the far wall opening out onto the yard. Past the yard was a regular old rusty fence, hardly six foot high. No razor wire or nothing. And beyond that the woods. Dont make no sense now do it? Dont even look to be any cameras in here, in the goddamn visiting room.
I showed up at ten on the dot so I’m the only visitor yet. Whole place to meself. A buzzer groans from somewhere deep in the building, doors sucking open. There’s ashtrays around so I sits at a table near where the wall opens up and I lights up a smoke. Fucken hell, they got er scald in here dont they? Down in HMP it’s all the same now if youre caught with tobacco or fucken heroin. It’s all contraband. And mind you, tobacco is worth about as much as the best dope on the inside too. Fellas selling their nicotine patches for Christ sakes. One New Year’s when I was inside I got me hands on a level-one patch and a fella showed me how to heat it up with a lighter and draw the nicotine out of it. Run the lighter back and forth underneath it, couple of inches away, until all that brown juice bubbles to the surface. Wipe it off with a bit of tissue or bible paper or whatever you got, then toss in a pinch of loose tea and spark her up. Three or four cigarettes out of the one patch, if youre careful. What we’re reduced to sometimes, hey Johnny? Get a good fucken hit off it though.
Voices down the corridor, doors clangin, another buzzer. Christ, the old heart poundin in me chest. All this way, all this time. A low, deep voice says Come on now Pudding, got yourself a visitor. Pudding? That’s funny aint it. Soft and sweet like pudding! Ha-fucken-ha. Youre not gonna try and make a run for it now I hope? And the voice this time’s got a little bit of sarcasm in it, so that you cant help but expect it to be told to batter to fuck. Still tryna wrap me head around the situation here when a gnarled and twisted little scraggle of a man is wheeled in through the door at the far end of the room. Wheeled in. Wheeled. What the fuck is going on here fellas? I stands up, takes a step towards them, then I steps back, sits back down. The little scrap in the wheelchair sorta looks at me from out the corner of his eye, like the way youd eyeball someone youre planning to fuck over. He wont look at me directly. The guard wheels him right up to where I’m sitting so that one of the footrests on the wheelchair is touching me shin. And not a word from the guard, nothing, doesnt even so much as look at me, turns and walks back to from where he came, whistling low under his breath. And then it’s me and . . . well . . . me and my father. Except this is not . . . I mean I got just as open a mind as the next fella . . . but . . . and it’s not the wheelchair, it’s not . . . yes, I mean the wheelchair is a shocker, no question, but it’s the man in the wheelchair that does me head in. Or the shadow of the man. Cant be no more than a hundred and twenty pounds for fuck sakes. I could wrap me whole hand around his fucken biceps couldnt I? I could. I’m searching his face for the telltale scar, or scars, but he’s so wrinkled and lopsided . . . He’s supposed to be in his mid-fifties or so, but swear to fuck he looks to be seventy-five. No joke. Maybe he’s sick?
Are you sick or . . . ?
/> He sits there kinda bitter and dopey with his head tilted slightly so the right-hand corner of his mouth glistens with spittle. This is not . . . this cant . . .
Got a camera under that getup?
This bit sorta snarled at me from out the corner of his mouth, like it was all forced out of one side of his body, gravelly and cavernous.
What? No . . . it’s ahhh . . .
Oh, see I thought you were wanting to take a goddamn picture.
I’m not . . . well I thought . . .
What do you want?
Me . . . ?
No, the fucken chair there.
I just thought . . . it’d be nice to meet you . . .
Who the Christ are you to me?
What? Well youre my . . . you mean you dont know who I am?
All’s I motherfucken know is I havent had a visitor in over ten motherfucken years, and never in this place, and I’d be content to go another ten without one if I make it that long. So whoever you are and whatever you want, spit it out.
After the effort of this tirade he gives over to a wretched, rib-cracking coughing fit that rattles his rickety old wheelchair and raises thick blue worms all over his forehead and temples and neck and I’m about to reach out for him cause he really dont look like he’ll live through the next minute if I dont, but then he works a dirty gob of phlegm up out of his lungs and cannonballs it across the room where it splats dead centre on a poster about domestic violence. The poster’s got this blurry image of some hefty dude off in the background and this missus up front with a black eye and the caption underneath says He said he’d never do it again . . . twenty times. The big chunky glob of chest scum jiggles on the poor dolly’s forehead. I glances back at Stevie. My father. My biological father. He sits there and wheezes and hacks for a little bit. I lets him catch his breath until he juts out his chin and arches his eyebrows at me as if to say Get on with it, out with it. Gotta catch me own breath now.
Well . . . I’m Johnny. Keough. I’m your . . . youre my . . . ahhh fuck . . . I dont know man, I dont know . . . I’m passing through town and . . . so I thought I’d drop in to see . . .
I can feel me weight shifting in the chair, my body tellin me to bolt for the door. I dont fucken need this. Some things, some people, they’re best left up to the imagination. Youre better off not knowing, better off making it all up as you goes along and then sticking to it. Take your delusions to the fucken grave like everyone else. Like Tanya and Pius and Old Bat Shit, all that crowd. Better off. I feels me hands on the armrests of the chair and I’m pushin off, eyeing the far door, measuring how long the distance. But I cops his expression then, old Stevie, the bubbling realization of the true nature of this visit. One side of his face slackens, softens, the left corner of his mouth bobs open like he’s gonna say something, but then he’s close-lipped all of a sudden, nods his head about a half an inch and leaves it there. I settles back into me chair, takes a breath.
They tells me youre my father, I mean biologically.
Well now, lucky you. Who tells you?
What . . . I was told . . . my sister . . . or mother . . . you knows the story . . . I was brought up by my grandmother and grandfather, right, I thought they were my folks, but it was my sister . . . and anyhow . . . well I was told that you and her . . . I wrote you some letters . . . I dont know b’y . . . I’m here now . . .
Youre here now, yeah, and what? I dont got no cocksuckin offspring that I know of. How old are you?
I’ll be twenty-four next . . .
Well how in the Christ am I supposed to remember some bitch I tapped twenty-four years ago? What’s her name?
Tanya. Tanya Keough. She was nearly sixteen, I think.
Tanya Keough. From Town?
Well from up the Southern Shore . . .
Holy fuck! I do remember, I do . . .
Yeah, she’s . . .
. . . and I tell you why? Wanna know how I remembers?
I’m on me feet, suddenly. A stale waft of piss and sweat off him. I’m willing him not to say what I knows he’s dyin to say. And I dont know exactly how I knows. I just do. It’s in his voice, a glee. It’s in his eyes, this nausea. And in my head, some long-lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle suddenly being snapped into place. I backs up towards the corner edge of the table to put the right amount of distance between us. Anchor my feet. A pulsing in my skull. Hands balled into cold and sweaty fists. He dont seem to take much notice, or if he does he dont seem to care.
. . . yeah . . . she was a sweet little thing, your mother . . .
. . . alright old-timer . . . that’s enough . . .
. . . come to think on it, I met her shortly before I done my first federal bit . . .
. . . shut your fucken mouth, I’m tellin ya . . .
. . . yeah, little Tanya, little baygirl . . .
. . .
. . . always thought she’d keep in touch too, but nope, not a visit, not a phone call, not so much as a postcard when I got sent down. Wanna know what I got sent down for that time? Forcible confinement and ra . . .
So fast shit happens, so fast. I’m already over on the other side of the room watchin it all go down. His gaunt, bony neck snapping back like a toothpick and the chair tumbling over and over until it rests upright on its wheels again and gives a little creaking half spin back and forth, back and forth, while he lays folded in half with one of his legs twisted up under his torso and the blood trickling out the side of his temple. But he’s laughing aint he? Cocksucker. This deep gaping chuckle full of lung and grit and beach rocks. But he’ll be howling for a guard soon enough now and I’m not so far gone to say it wouldnt bother me to be hanging around to explain this whole mess. But Johnny could end all this right fucken now. He could. I could. Go down for life. Charge across the room and stomp that scrawny fucker’s throat into the floor. Christen the new boots, hey John-John? Splatter his sick brains out with that wheelchair. Thumb his eyeballs out the back of his skull. Ahhh, but that’s exactly what he wants now aint it? That’s exactly what Stevie Puddester wants.
I opens the door. He growls out, still chuckling away:
Some fucken hero you are. I’d say you were already in the house . . .
This bit rattles me. Just his way of letting me know that he knows a fuck of a lot more about me than he was letting on. But I dont take the bait. I cant. I wont. Gone, me, Johnny, scuttling along the tight crumbling corridor towards the cold grey light of the outside world. I slows as I passes a guard on me left. He’s tucked into a little stall, hunched over a copy of Mad. The guard grunts at me, nothing more, no signing out, nothing.
My hand on the door to the entrance, old Stevie roars one more time, a snarled and throaty and muffled cry for help that I hope never fucken arrives.
13
The left eye is completely swollen shut now. There’s a headache, a sharp one. Still seeing two of everything, although it’s not as bad as it was this morning. The foot too, fucken killin me, toes on the left foot bashed and crunched in. However they managed that, through these army boots, big old shit-stompers. Some fucken tough guy Johnny is. Four fractured ribs, they says. All the fingernails on me right hand are shredded off like someone held my fingers against a grinding wheel. You can see the bone of two of me knuckles. Honestly no clue how that came about. Me arm is black and pocked with bits of asphalt. And my mouth, three of the front teeth gone and three or four more barely hanging on. My face. Me jaw. They’ll be wiring that shut soon as the swelling goes down. Fucken hell. It’s a strange feeling, I aint never had me jaw busted before, like a door off its hinges. Try to open and shut my mouth and one side of the jaw cant catch up and then finds it has nowhere to settle. It dont fit no more. Six stitches above me eye. The rest of my body, what’s not bandaged up, is one big bruise. It fucken well burns and throbs and stings and pulsates all over, but it dont hardly hurt unless I thinks about it. What hurts, I guess, is the how. How it happened. Live your whole life on the edge of the battle, waiting for some fucker to get in yo
ur face. You learn to be ready for it. But how in the Christ was I supposed to be ready for that? Fucken teenage girls?
What do I remember? This is what they wants to know. Tell us what you can remember . . . Since when? Since that lanky Reeves fucker? Caul’s? The hoof of a moose? Since fucken Kingston?
We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night Page 20
