Simon Kerr

by Rainbow Singer (lit)

  The Rev shrugged and asked us, 'Boys. What happened?'

  We told him in one voice, loud and clear: 'They started it. They stole our paddle.'

  'You fought over a paddle?' the Rev said.

  We tried to make him understand what the significance of the paddle was but we couldn't.

  The Rev cut us dead. 'What ever happened to turning the other cheek, Derry?'

  'With those two I ran out of cheeks. Pops,' Derry said.

  The Rev sighed. 'Normally, I'd ground you for something like this son but I don't think that's appropriate what with this being a holiday for Wil. You tell me, Derry - what should your punishment be?'

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  'Nothing is what his punishment should be, Pops,' I pleaded. 'We were provoked.'

  'You don't understand, Wil,' the Rev said. 'Derry isn't allowed to fight any more.'

  'How can he defend himself then?' I said.

  'With words,' sermonised the Rev. 'With love.'

  That struck me dumb, speechless dumb then. It strikes me as plain dumb now. The Rev - this man who ran round trying to help other people with their problems -couldn't quite get it that his son's love was violence the same as anybody else's, and that clearly Derry's problem was that he'd more love in him than other people.

  'Tell me what you'll do to make amends,' the Rev said to Derry.

  After a bit of thinking Derry said, 'Wash the cars.'

  'The cars! You wash the cars and the windows of the manse and the church, and you swear not to fight again, and that might just make me forget this happened. Yeah?'

  'Yeah,' said Derry.

  'Do you swear?' The Rev and thrust his Bible into Derry's stomach. 'Yeah.'

  'Then raise your right hand up, son.'

  Derry put his left hand on the Bible and his right in the air - like he was in court. 'I swear,' he said through gritted teeth.

  We ate Frosties for breakfast and then had some flapjacks without the syrup. Then Derry went out to the garage. I followed. We got the soapsuds together and set to washing the Rev's gay-looking A-Team van.

  'Why aren't you allowed to fight any more?' I asked him with a sponge in hand.

  'No reason,' he said.

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  'Tell me,' I said.

  'Look, you don't have to do this, so why don't you go inside and pull your pud or something?'

  'Because I don't feel like it,' I said, and splashed some soapy water at him.

  'I'm not in the mood,' he warned.

  So I threw my sodden sponge at him.

  It hit him square in the chest. Boy, did that ever make ol' David Banner mad. The Hulk picked up the bucket. 'I'll throw this over you,' he roared.

  'That's why!' I said running backwards away from him. 'Your temper. You lost it and really hurt someone didn't you? And they found out?'

  'Yeah, so what?' Derry roared.

  I smiled and came back towards him with my hands up above my head. 'So nothing,' I said. 'I just wanted to know.'

  We were on the last of the manse first-floor windows, when Derry finally told me the whole of the Hulk episode: 'I was suspended from school for beating up this bully. I broke his jaw, five of his ribs, and all the bones in his right hand.' 'Jesus,' I said.

  'And I spat on him afterwards,' he added.

  I looked at Derry. He was expecting condemnation. 'Nice one,' I said.

  Derry smiled at me and shook his head. 'You know, Wil. Other people in school they think I'm a psycho but you, you, you're a strange little guy.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I guess what I mean is you don't look like much of a fighter but you are.'

  'That's because I'm an Ulster Freedom Fighter, Derry,' I said.

  'You're a what?'

  'You wanted to know about it the other night. Well, now you know. I'm UFF.'

  He looked long and hard at me. 'You're saying back home you're a terrorist?'

  'A Loyalist terrorist, yeah, fighting for Queen and Country.'

  He frowned. 'How'd you get on the Project then?' 'Nobody else knows.'

  'Holy shit,' he said, and smiled that crooked smile of his. 'Like you say - nice one.'

  We did the church windows in an almost reverential silence. The quiet was nothing to do with God or the stained-glass St Paul on the road to Damascus, or the Rev's rage even. It wasn't to do with nerves, tottering around on top of two beat-up ol' sets of ladders, either. It was the kind of peace you can only have with someone if you trust them with a secret you would never have trusted another being with.

  When we were almost done Derry said, 'You think they'll kick us off the Project, Wil?'

  'Nah,' I said. 'Their type'll just give us what they think is a good talking to.'

  'You reckon?'

  'They're liberals aren't they? Liberals have to be liberal.'

  'If they kick us off the Project they'll send you home on the next flight.'

  'I know - and you'll be grounded until you're twenty-one.'

  We laughed.

  We knew it could be our last laugh together. That really killed us.

  Later that day after we'd finished our chores who should

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  roll up into the church car lot but our appointed Project Judge and jurors: Stacey-May Roller and Counsellors Ciaran and Kate.

  Mom Horrowitz ushered both us and them into the dining-room where she kept all of her best antique furniture. We were made to sit around the Amish table she'd restored and listen while the Counsellors drank coffee and talked at us.

  'Wil and Derry, if your motives for fighting were sectarian we have no choice but to remove you from the Project,' Counsellor Ciaran said to us like the dirty Fenian he was.

  We said they weren't sectarian. They were personal. We had our paddle stolen and then we were provoked by insults.

  But the Ulster liberals didn't listen.

  'If you called Seamus a Taig we can't allow you to continue on the Project. Did you?' said Kate, unlike the good Prod she was.

  Truth is I don't really know what was shouted out in the heat of that fight, if anything but, never to underestimate the power of denial, we said that was a downright lie and if Seamus had said it then he was a dirty no-good liar.

  But the Ulster counsellors wouldn't listen. They went on and on at us.

  Stacey-May didn't say anything until our other interrogators ran out of coffee and steam. 'Wil, Derry . . . '

  She left this dramatic pause so's she'd have our full attention when she tried to play her good cop role; instead my mind had wandered back to thinking of her trying to get her lard-arse into her bath. 'Would you say sorry to the others at the ecumenical service tomorrow?'

  If they said sorry first, we said.

  'What about if both sides say sorry at the same time?' Stacey-May the good cop proposed. Alright, we agreed.

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  20

  Critical Mass

  Wouldn't you know, the 'ecumaniacal' service was at a chapel!

  Mom Horrowitz drove us there in her station wagon. The first I knew about it was when we arrived at the chapel gates. I said point blank, 'There's no way I can go in there.'

  'What,' said Mom Horrowitz.

  'I'm a Baptist for Christ's sake!'

  'Don't blaspheme,' she warned me.

  'Sorry, Mom,' I said. 'It's just Baptists don't go to chapel. We go to church.'

  'You have to go,' Mom Horrowitz said like it was a threat.

  'Or what?'

  'Or else I don't know,' she said.

  'You don't understand,' I pleaded, trying a different tack. 'My Da'll kill me if he finds out I went into a chapel to worship.'

  'Then my advice is don't tell him,' she said. 'This is what the Project is all about.'

  'Nobody told me I'd have to go to Mass.'

  'It's for your own good.'

  'You could have fooled me,' I said.

  'Wil,' she said, 'we want you to stay on with us, we

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  really do but, you're going t
o have to swallow some pride here, son, or they'll remove you from the Project.'

  What was I going to do.-* I thought about having to go home. I thought of the way Ma would look when she had to collect me from Shannon Airport herself. I thought of having to leave my closest friend and never seeing him again. I looked over at Derry.

  He leaned over and whispered in my ear, 'Let's just do it for the sake of doing it, yeah?'

  'Yeah,' I said, or sighed more like.

  We got out of the car and met up with Phil and Helmut, both of whom had two big shiners each, but there wasn't any time for me to say anything more than: 'You look like you're wearing eye-shadow the pair of you.'

  Stacey-May led the counsellors as they escorted us to the meet-up point - under one of those big signs proclaiming god is love.

  That's where it happened, the making of peace. In front of God. In front of that chapel. In front of a frowning Teresa, my just good friend. In front of every Projectee and most of the Americans' parents.

  Yea verily, on their Taigy hallowed ground they made us shake hands. They made us say sorry.

  I went first down that line of six Taigs - yeah that's right, I didn't even realise Seamus and Peter's hosts and two others had weighed-in. Six of them Taigs and only four of us - and we still whipped them. I walked up past them like it was a military inspection. You want to have seen the battered state they were in. I can tell you I enjoyed shaking their hands, squeezing their bruised knuckles that little bit too hard. We all said sorry at exactly the same time as agreed, that is until I got to Peter where I

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  paused, and smiled into his beat-up face, and said like an English Officer, 'Terribly sorry, old chap.'

  Peter bit his busted lip and said, 'Sorry yourself.'

  Seamus was last in line. He wasn't bruised on his face except for the one I landed over his Cyclops eye. I waited for him to say sorry first. He waited for me to say sorry first. Another fight was in the air, you could feel the wanting of it. There was a moment of hush amongst the whole assembly. Nobody budged as their whole peacemaking exercise ground to a halt. . .

  Except for Counsellor Ciaran, who stepped up to us. 'Say sorry, fellas, shake hands and let that be it.'

  But Seamus and I just stood there like gunfighters, staring each other down. I really didn't like the way he could look down on me.

  Counsellor Ciaran said, 'Come on. Everybody's waiting to go into church.'

  I looked at Seamus. 'So—' I began saying, with no intention of finishing before . . . Seamus said the full, 'Sorry.'

  Got him! Only then did I add the missing, '—rry.' I held out my hand in victo-rry. Seamus seized it.

  I squeezed his fingers as hard as I could.

  He dug his thumbnail into my thumb as we shook.

  People clapped us, would you believe it? The Americans, no doubt? They'll clap anything, especially themselves, their own efforts at mediation, their intentions made good.

  As the others filed forward to shake Seamus's hand I watched Derry carefully. He didn't even look at Seamus in case the Hulk decided to make another public appearance.

  Our group reformed at the end of this parade and walked into the chapel side-by-side with the Taigs in a

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  show of 'or else' peace. Yeah, we had no choice but to do what we were told. Do it, or else! Or else what? 'Or else I don't know' is the adult's stock-in-trade reply. And what does that mean - other than I'll hit you or I'll ground you or I'll ignore you or I'll kick you out of my house or ultimately, I'll crush your spirit no matter what.

  We sat together at the back of the chapel, as far from matriarch Horrowitz and Teresa the Void of lost love, and as close to a quick exit as possible. I justified my choice of position to the others in a whisper: 'Just in case we have to run outside and boke.'

  The others gave me this strange look. I now know that they were looking at me with disbelief. They didn't expect the same thing from this service as me. I thought it would make me want to hurl because I had been led to believe that Taigs worshipped God in something like a Black Mass, you know - with witches fucking the devil up on the altar - just the complete opposite of what I believed to be a church service. Surprisingly, the service was not like the Iron Maiden video of Number of the Beast, but very similar to the Baptist Communion one. And shock-horror, us Prods were not struck down by God's lightning for taking part!

  When we crossed town and got back to the manse, the Rev had finished both his services but not his ministering, never his ministering. When we walked into the kitchen he was glugging milk out of a carton with the face of a missing kid on it. He asked us how things went. I knew the reason he asked us was to shame us more, to enforce our communal submission, to make us more obedient in future.

  'OK,' said Derry.

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  'You make it up?' the Rev asked with a mouth full of white ook.

  'Yeah,' Derry said.

  The Rev raised his carton to us. 'I'm glad you did the right thing,' he said. 'For both your sakes.'

  'The right thing,' I sneered - not meaning for it to come out loud.

  'You don't think that was the right thing, Wil?' asked the Rev, taking my words as a challenge to his authority.

  'I don't know,' I said.

  'Oh, so you don't think that was the right thing! Well, what else would you have done to save your sorry ass?' Mom Horrowitz said, 'Pops?'

  'Sorry for the ass,' the Rev said. 'But the question stands.'

  'I don't know,' I said again.

  'Well I do. I sure do. Do you know why that is?' 'Nah,' I said.

  'I'm older, wiser, and I pray to God.'

  'We pray to God too. Pops,' said Derry.

  The Rev looked over the two of us standing there, in defiance of him, the patriarch. He set his milk carton down. 'I think the two of you better start praying right now,' he said.

  The Rev moved towards us like the way my Da did when he was going to kick seven bells out of me.

  'You fucking hit me. Da, and I'll kill you,' I yelled, putting my fists up.

  Before anything else could happen. Mom Horrowitz stepped in between us. She told a hold of his hand. 'Look, Pops, they've eaten a lot of humble pie today. People choke on humble pie.'

  The Rev glared down at his tiny wife. Then us. Then her. 'Amen to that,' he said and walked out of the kitchen.

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  Mom Horrowitz came into our bedroom later that afternoon with some milk and some chocolate-chip cookies.

  'Trick or treat,' she said, and put them down on the chest of drawers.

  Neither of us got up for the something good to eat, so she came and sat on the bed beside me. 'You weren't scared in there, were you?'

  I didn't answer.

  'He wouldn't have hit you,' she said. 'Would he, Derry?'

  Derry didn't answer.

  'Don't think too bad of your Pops,' she said to us. 'He just believes, like his father before him, that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, OK?'

  Derry and me, we resisted talk, were silent. That is sometimes the only weapon left to beloved sons.

  She put her arm around me. 'Nobody will hit you here,' she said. 'I promise you that.'

  After a lifetime of beatings, and my own Ma ignoring it, how could I have trusted her? I said nothing.

  'Wil,' she said. 'It'd be nice if we all said sorry wouldn't it, and forgot this ever happened.'

  'Like this morning?' I said.

  'Yeah, but it'll be easier. We're family aren't we?' she said back and smiled a gleaming white smile.

  I made no reply. In my experience there was no reply to enforced peace in a family, except for the son to say sorry.

  She left the room with the words, 'Eat your cookies, and then you can have a word with Pops.'

  When I was sure she was gone I turned to Derry. 'Does your Pops the Rev ever hit you?' I said.

  Derry already had a cookie in his gob. 'He's tried not to.'

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>   'But has he?'

  Derry spat some milk-and-cookie ook out. 'Why do you want to know?'

  'I just do, all right. Has he?'

  'Yeah.'

  'When?'

  'When I was smaller.' 'With his fists?'

  'Nah,' Derry said. 'Not like that.'

  I fell silent. With envy. Or remorse. Or self-pity. Or something.

  'Yours does, doesn't he?' Derry said.

  I didn't answer. That was my answer. The silence of the Void was my only weapon against my Da.

  Jesus supposedly said, 'I am the way, the truth and the light. Nobody comes to the Father except by me.'

  Jesus H was a son once upon a time too. But never forget, Jesus was His Daddy's best boy. Jesus, like Isaac before him, had been taught he should be happy to sacrifice himself on the the altar of patriarchy.

  Before a TV dinner of humble pie we went to see the Rev in his study. It was one of the few times I ventured upstairs in that house.

  He had the door closed so we would have to knock and wait for him to say: 'Come in.'

  We went in.

  'Sit down,' he said.

  We sat down.

  The Rev sighed, 'Well—'

  Forced to, we said sorry first.

  'I'm sorry too, boys,' the Rev said. 'I lost my temper. It's just that you gave me a lot of trouble . . .'

  So there you have it; like good little disciples we sacrificed ourselves on the altar of patriarchy. When we

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  were eventually allowed to leave the room I was fuming, like I was little Isaac stabbed through the heart by Abraham and heaped on the pyre, burning up on the inside.

  'That's the last time,' I said to Derry as we walked down the stairs. 'Jesus.' 'Yeah,' he said back.

  That was the last time we would play out the role of Daddy's boys. For ever and ever. Amen. Or so I stupidly thought.

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  21

  Primal Hoarding

  I think it was Freud who had this theory about the Primal Horde. If I remember rightly what he was saying was -that civilisation began when a band of sons, a simian brotherhood, took down the tyrannical patriarch of their Horde. Not before time, boys! is what I say - even though, that's when it was.

  There was a big problemo with this prehistoric mercy killing - Freud said that by killing the Father these ape brothers made His hold on them stronger. See, the sons all loved Him in spite of hating Him, they all owed Him the vital protection He afforded them from others. The guilt of their rising up, it killed them. And I don't mean they died laughing. See, due to this original sin of patricide, Freud argued the brothers were supposed to have internalised this Holy Ghost of the Father and passed it on, generation to generation. Therefore the ferocity of the primal Father figure will never leave us. He has become our vengeful God.