Like when Stacey-May asked, 'Do either of you think there is a solution in sight to Ulster's problems?' I answered right off the cuff, 'Nah.' But Teresa went and said, 'Yes. I think that over time schemes like the Ulster Project will help to reduce the intolerance and bigotry and violence among the two communities.'
And like when Stacey-May asked, 'Have you made friends with people from the other side on the Project?' I answered, 'Yeah, but then they showed their true colours. Green. White. And gold.' But Teresa said, 'Yes. I've made some good protestant friends on the project and I look forward to keeping up those friendships when we return home.'
The politically correct line of questioning went on like that until Stacey-May did the dirty - she pulled out her camera and asked us: 'When are you two going to make friends again?'
That took me completely by surprise.
I shot a look at Teresa—
Who was looking at me too—
For a split second, lit up by the lightning flash of Stacey-May's camera, we stared into each other's eyes. I looked deep into those soul-windows, but I couldn't find what I'd seen in there before. It had already been had away by that thieving Taig Seamus!
I walked away.
I wish now I'd stayed and talked some, but I walked away.
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32
Nightmare 3
That night I had another American Dream gone wrong.
I was back at the swimming pool, back at the pool party where I'd kissed Teresa and tasted the fire of Jack D on her tongue. Only, I was alone in the pool and it was dark. Yeah, I was alone in the cold dark water when I saw something floating in the middle of the pool. It was a dark hump, looked like the coil of a Leviathan coming out of the deep or something. I swam over to see what it was, hke stupid kids do in stupid horror movies, and when I got there I saw it was a body. I don't know why but I was compelled to turn it over, see who it was.
You know who it was?
That's right.
The Fonz.
You know what that means, don't you?
Yeah, my mentor was dead, my super-ego gone. Murdered by the looks of it. The Fonz's back was shredded by slash marks, marks that could only fit the glove of Freddy.
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33
Summerfest
I'll be honest. I didn't much care if the Fonz was dead back then. When I woke up I thought, so what? Good riddance, he was a small Italian Taig and he didn't give good advice. In fact, he made a fool outta me, a love Judas. So the fuck what? It didn't matter. None of it mattered, except maybe going to Summerfest! I was up for that alright. A festival of eating, and drinking. And being merry with Derry.
So that's where we went that last Wednesday of my freedom. At two in the afternoon Mom Horrowitz took us downtown, to beside the Great Lake, where festival tents sprawled over the acres of a pre-development waterfront site.
She dropped us at the pick-up point for cabs.
'I'll see you back here at ten,' she told us.
'Eleven, Mom, please?' pleaded Derry. 'Or we won't see this INXS band.'
'Ten-thirty.'
'Eleven.'
Mom tutted. 'Ten-thirty. Take it or walk home.' 'OK,' said Derry, tutting back at her. If only he'd known how we'd regret not getting an earlier lift.
We had to buy a special pass to get into all the gigs
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during the day and the big twenty-thousand-plus rock concert that evening. I think it was about twenty dollars' worth but I took my programme and paid the man almost gladly. I still had a bunch of my Da's dollars to spend even if I wasn't talking to him ever again!
I looked about me. It was wall-to-wall people, clustered around the sound stages, the stalls, the tents, the burger bars, the beer bars, the pizzerias, the German restaurants. I mean, I'd never seen anything like it. With the number of people in one place, it almost scared me. To get out of the crush we went and got an ice-cold Coke from a drinks machine and mooched around some by a stall, all the while just looking.
'This comes here every year?' I said to Derry.
'Yeah,' he said. 'Don't you have something like it in Belfast?'
'Nah. They don't do anything. No bands want to come to Northern Ireland. Except those Taigs U2.'
'They're Taigs?' asked Derry, sounding well surprised.
'Aye of course they are. Did you ever hear that song "Bloody Sunday"?'
'Yeah,' he said.
'That's a Provo song.'
'I don't believe it,' he said. 'I bought that War album!' 'Well,' I told him, 'Now you know you most likely funded the PIRA.' 'Shite!'
We hadn't had much for lunch. Just a few ham rolls. So pizza was a number one priority. We stopped at this Little Italy Pizzeria. They were giving out all different kind of pizza samples for next to nothing. We took about four pieces each, sat down, gorbed, and watched the world go by.
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'How many people get shot dead in Ulster every year, Wil?' Derry said with a mouth full of stringy mozzarella.
'Fifty or so. Maybe a hundred if it's a bad year.'
'No shit! Way more people get murdered in Milwaukee every year than that!'
'That right?' I said.
'Yeah!'
We sampled some folded-over pizza then Derry got to speaking his mind again. 'I thought it'd be a lot more.'
'Nah. It flares up and dies down, you know?'
'That's because they don't do it right, do they? They just retaliate.'
'Who?'
'Your lot - the Prods.'
'Why - what do you think we should we do?' 'You should just kill all the Taigs like Hitler did with the Jews, yeah?'
'Aye. Maybe you're right.'
Derry burped. 'Pizza's good isn't it?'
I burped back, 'Yeah.'
When we'd quite finished decibelching and discussing genocide, we went and watched what the programme advertised as a Sawgrass Blues band. The music was good but it got me down, threatened to get me so down that I'd be amongst those dead men again. See it was all about losing your no-good baby to another man! 'Let's go,' I said to Derry.
So we made our way through the crowds to the next stage up the walkway. Some Country and Western band were steel-guitaring away there and we didn't want to hear that guff so we moved on - or at least we tried to because that's when a shrill voice cried out from the crowd behind us:
'Psycho! Psycho Horrowitz! Is that you?'
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Derry and me turned round and that's when I met the mutant with braces he'd boasted about snogging - you remember - the lovely Anne? Of course he didn't want me to put two and two together when we saw her, because she was this tall skinny thing with a mouth like your man Jaws out of Moonraker, and a face like the pizza we'd just eaten.
'Hiya, Psycho!' Anne said.
'Oh no,' Derry replied.
'Long time no see!'
'Yeah,' Derry said.
'Killed anybody lately. Psycho?'
Derry scowled at her.
Anne wasn't put off. 'Well, aren't you going to introduce me to your little friend?'
'This is Wil,' Derry said. 'Wil, this is—'
It was clear he didn't want to finish that sentence -ever - so Anne butted in. 'Hi, Wil,' she said with a big metal smile. 'I'm Anne, Anne Anderson. I used to go to the same High School as Psycho here.'
'Hi there,' I said, trying hard not to snigger at the thought of Derry and her french-kissing in the radioactive mutant USA.
She caughtened on to my accent: 'You're foreign?'
'Aye.'
'I know - you're Irish,' she said.
'He is not Irish!' Derry told her before I needed to.
'You're Scottish then?'
'He's not that either,' Derry said.
'Where are you from?'
'Never mind,' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'
'Northern Ireland,' Derry told her like he meant to scare her away.
'Oh there!' Anne exclaimed. 'So what are you guys doing here - you going to pl
ant a bomb or something?'
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'Yeah,' Derry said.
I could hear the Hulk in his voice so I had to act. 'We've got stuff to talk about, Anne,' I said, smiling all the while. 'Be a good girl and fuck off.'
She wasn't used to being talked to like that! You want to have seen her jaw drop open - I swear I've never seen so much heavy metal in my life!
We walked away. I was definitely getting good at walking away on women.
I thought it best not to rip the pish about Anne. We did have serious stuff to talk about. What was it.' You already know in your heart of hearts the stuff we had to talk about was the where and the when and the who we were going to hit. You already know I'd done this sort of thing a hundred times with Alco and the Hit Squad. And yeah, I knew the operational rigmarole down to a tee but somehow, things seemed more strained, more difficult. The reason: for me anyway, it was because we were talking about premeditated killing. The sort that gets you charged with Murder One by the American Justice System.
Even if it's a so-called 'Political Crime'. Even if you're fourteen.
Even if you were brought up from day one to hate Taigs so much you could kill them (though that's the real crime).
We made our plans overlooking the Great Lake, supping up our black coffees. They say coffee gives you short-term amnesia.
Maybe that explains Derry's misinterpretation of what we, the last of the criminal brothers, were aiming to do in Round Six? I don't think so myself. How come I remembered then? I downed two plastic cups to his one.
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and I still managed to hold on to the idea that this was war, not murder.
'It's got to be at the leaving party,' Derry said. 'That's the last day, when the Taigs'll all be together in one place.'
'Yeah,' I agreed.
'We'll take Suzi, ride over there and let them have it!'
What with Derry's gung-ho attitude it was like being home again, talking to Rick the Prick or Brian or Wee Sammy. I couldn't help being the cautious one.
'We'll have to get some balaclavas,' I said.
'What are they?'
'You know - terrorist head-gear? Like a black woollen hat with eyeholes and a mouthhole.' Derry looked blank.
'You must have a military surplus store in Milwau kee?' I asked him.
Again Derry looked blank.
'We need them so we don't get recognised, yeah?' I said.
Derry was miles away, staring out over the lake. 'OK?' 'And we need combats. Clothes that we can throw away.' 'OK?'
'And maps of the area for the getaway.' 'Whatever,' Derry sighed. 'The big stage ought to be on now. Let's go laugh at Kool and the Gang!'
So that's what we did. We went and sat on these empty bum-numbing wooden benches right at the back of the arena and waited for Kool to appear.
When the gang came on to the stage there was hardly anyone in the place - must have been a thousand, tops -and they were all up at the front ready to boogie.
The Gang warmed up for a-brave while and then when
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they'd got it together, they started to play the one Kool and the Gang song everybody knew: Celebration. And at the right moment Kool the boogie man came on in this pink sequin outfit and started shrieking for everybody-everybody to celebrate good times. That killed us that did.
We'd had well enough by song two and left about halfway though, but even outside the arena, at around five-thirty, we heard the concert end with another tired rendition of Celebration.
Derry laughed and raised his plastic Coke glass. 'Celebrate good times, Wil.'
I knocked his cup. 'Aye.'
'I'll take Peter,' he said. 'Seamus is all yours unless you want some help.'
'Nah,' I said. 'I'll deal with him.'
'Sure you will,' said Derry. 'You want another hot dog?'
We'd had four in a row already so I said, 'Nah.'
'You looking forward to INXS?'
'Yeah,' I said. I hadn't heard any of their stuff but it was a live rock concert - something I'd never been to before.
Derry looked at me. 'Bet you wish it was Van Halen though, don't you?'
'Yeah,' I said. That was one of my dearest wishes never ever to come true all right. When I think about it - none of my dear American wishes came true in the truest sense of true. But then, they weren't really mine at all; they were just more fantasies on loan from the group mind.
We went and sat on those bum-numbing benches again to wait for INXS to come on. The programme said they were due to come on stage at 8.30.
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We sat there for over an hour, with upwards of ten thousand screaming fans watching and waiting for that band. They never did show though. See, another one of those lightning storms blew in across the Great Lake around eight. It started raining and it kept chucking it down the whole night. INXS at Summerfest was a total wash-out.
Derry and me were left there, taking shelter in a German restaurant, as the waters rose around us and night fell. That is, until the owner of the place kicked us out for taking up his space and not eating his food.
We went and stood under a tent near the entrance.
When we were just about the last ones still on site at nine, it dawned on me we had an hour and a half more to kill before we were collected. 'Good this, isn't it?'
'Yeah,' said Derry sarcastically.
About half an hour passed in pissed-off silence and teeming rain. I was cold and wet and I wanted to talk about something so I said. 'You know that girl Anne?'
'Yeah,' he said.
'Did you really snog her?'
Derry was a little too emphatic with his, 'Yeah!' 'Honestly?'
He shook his wet head. 'Nah. I was going to ask her out but—'
'She kept calling you Psycho?' 'Something like that.'
That's when I got to thinking maybe I was lucky to have kissed Teresa, snogged her in her bikini? What do they say - yeah, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Maybe it is, I thought. Even if your love was for a Taig who betrayed it?
Derry must have read my-thoughts - or my face - or
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something because he said, 'How are you going to do
her?' 'Who?'
'Teresa,' he said.
The rain came down. I had no answer. 'Are you going to kill the Fenian bitch right off or make her suffer?' I had no answer.
'You should make her suffer - shoot her through the hands and feet - give her stigmata like Jesus, you know?' I made no answer.
'You are going to kill her, Wil, aren't you?' Under duress I said, 'Yeah.'
'Well you better start thinking about how you're going to do it then, hadn't you?' The rain came down.
By ten-thirty when Mom Horrowitz collected the drenched pair of us, I regret to say I had the notion of how I would do it. I would shoot Teresa once through the heart.
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34
Nightmare 4
Everybody knows Hollywood Horror is all about how many sequels you can milk from one scary story. It's the same with bad dreams: once the director, a.k.a. the self, gets cracking they just run and rerun and run.
I found myself to be an LA Raider, standing with my four shadows surrounding me (due to floodlighting) on the pitch in the Green Bay Stadium. I was playing in front of a packed house, baying for blood; still I could hear the commentator announce over the tannoy: fourth down at the forty-yard line.
666. 666. 666. Hut-hut-hut. That was my cue to run. I ran. See, somehow, I knew I was a wide receiver supposed to be running for a pass, across the thirty, the twenty. I was running full pelt looking for the spiral; looking for that spiral to complete the pattern play. The ten. The five. End zone coming up, ball spiralling in. Catch. Touchdown in sight. . .
Wham!
I got hit.
The Beast of Green Bay took me down, trounced me.
And while I was on the ground he started to pull his yellow trousers down.
I couldn't d
efend myself because I couldn't move. I was winded. My ribs felt like they were all broken. I looked over to the sidelines for help. Derry? But he wasn't there.
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Instead, I saw one of the Raiders cheerleaders - a bald one with a bleeding heart. . .
- Teresa? cheering the Beast on. And my coach, my coach who was Freddy, was jumping up and down shouting 'Do it! Do him up the arse. Beast!'
The Beast ripped my silver trousers down and pulled my jock to the side.
DREAM OVER
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35
Alienation
When I woke up it was morning. I was panting with panic. The sheets were drenched with sweat. And my head felt really, really heavy and fuzzy . . .
It was only then I noticed the bars running horizontally across my face.
Was I in prison?
Nah. That was when it struck me, freaked me out - I was wearing a football helmet. And I could guess whose too.
I leapt up out of bed and I yanked the helmet off me. When I saw it was a beat-up yellow with a green and white G on it I knew.
The number 666 confirmed it.
But that was OK. See, I knew the arse-bandit Beast was a dream, wasn't it?
DREAM OVER!
When I woke up it was still night, darkest night. I was lying with no clothes on me, not even a sheet.
I wiped the beads of sweat off my brow. I sighed. The football nightmare was over. The Beast. Freddy. Teresa. It was just a stupid dream.
I looked over at Derry who was still fast asleep. I
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envied him his peace. Why didn't he ever have nightmares? Then I thought - if he was awake right now -he'd see me naked, so I reached down to the side of the bed to pull up my sheets. That's when I noticed it.
I was fat. Pot-bellied fat Uke my Da, Uke I was pregnant with another son, a better son, a son of the Beast and a son of Belfast.
That's when I felt it - the life inside me - kick to get outside of me. I went into labour. Male labour. Which isn't the same as female labour because there was nowhere and no way for this foetus to get out, come out, except to rip its way out—
Like an Alien.
And so I became one of those doomed Daddy-boy Marines, hanging up on the walls of that failed teleform-ing colony, birthing my own Alien. Like they did - I screamed and I screamed as I saw the head chew its way out of my guts . . .
Simon Kerr Page 15
