American Skin

by Ken Bruen

  “Let me set you straight on a couple of things.”

  The guy glanced round at the other members of the unit but they weren’t getting into it, not with Stapleton. The guy wished he hadn’t left his pistol in the bedroom as he heard,

  “We’re in a war sonny boy, not some damn picnic where you get the weekends off. I don’t know who trained you, but they didn’t do too good a job, else you wouldn’t be asking questions. When Eire is free, when the last Brit is packing his arse out of our country, I’ll start dating, having me some/un. . . .”

  He paused, letting venom leak over the word, then,

  “Meantime, we have a job to do, a sacred duty, like the martyrs of sixteen, we don’t have time for personal lives. . . so shut your fucking mouth and get that pistol out of the bedroom, it won’t do you a whole lot of good if the Paras come bursting in, you think they’ll give you a moment to fetch it?”

  The guy was killed two weeks later on a botched job in Derry, Stapleton shed no tears, muttered,

  “Let that be a lesson to yous.”

  His legend was ensured when they captured a British major outside of Fermanagh. The man, a veteran of eighteen months on the streets of Belfast, had been taken at dawn, he was not intimidated by his captors, regarded them with scorn, so they sent Stapleton to have a wee chat with him.

  The major was seated on a hard chair, a wooden table before him. Stapleton took the chair opposite, said,

  “How are they treating you?”

  The major had undergone extensive training in subversive warfare and was not impressed by the good guy routine. He reached into his tunic, extracted a pack of Rothmans, a gold Zippo, and fired up, blew the smoke at Stapleton. Stapleton didn’t flinch, let the smoke invade his face, asked,

  “Mind if I have one of these, I’m trying to quit but what the hell.”

  The major, control reined tight, pushed the pack over, said,

  “Knock yourself out, Paddy.”

  Stapleton slowly lit the cig, studied the Zippo, it had the logo, “Queens finest.” As Stapleton downed a lungful of smoke, like an addict who hasn’t imbibed for a time, he asked, pointing at the logo,

  “That a nancy boy thing?”

  The major laughed, not quite believing this was the best the Boyos had to offer, said,

  “You’d probably know, you look like a nancy boy yourself.”

  Stapleton gouged the cig into the major’s right eye, saying,

  “Jaysus, they’re right, those yokes are bad for your health.”

  A few hours later, having garnered all the information the major had, he dragged the man outside, hung him from a tree near the road, said,

  “It’s a slow knot, going to take a while to croak.”

  He kept the Zippo, got a fellah on the Falls to erase the logo and put. . . “No Surrender” on there. It never ceased to amuse him that this was the war cry of the UDA.

  “The drinks are free and everything, but they hit you

  up at the door on the way out.”

  — TOM WAITS

  THE NUN was shaking my arm, said,

  “We’re about to land.”

  My mouth tasted of metal and my eyes hurt, I glanced at the window, darkness, punctuated by a huge array of lights. She said,

  “They gave us a lovely dinner.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Anxiety was sitting in my gut like acid. The wheels hit the Tarmac and the nun blessed herself. Within fifteen minutes, the doors were open and passengers began to move. The nun put out her hand, said,

  “A little something as a memento of our trip.”

  A relic of Padre Pio, she said,

  “He’s a saint now.”

  Did you go,

  “Yeah, way to go bro . . . or congratulations?”

  I said,

  “Thank you.”

  She gave me a look full of what my mother used to call devilment, her eyes dancing,

  “ ‘Tis the oddest thing, you were talking in your sleep.”

  I waited, fearful of what I might have disclosed and she added,

  “You had such a strong Irish accent, isn’t that the quarest thing?”

  Then she moved into the aisle, said,

  “God keep you safe.”

  I intended buying a gun as backup, lest the Lord didn’t hear her.

  “You are a foreigner; you do not feel our national

  animosities as we do.”

  — GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Arms and the Man, Act II

  OUTSIDE THE TERMINAL building, the humidity hit like a hurly. Got my jacket off and loosened the tie, joined the queue for cabs, or as I’d now have to say,

  “Got in line.”

  Moved quickly and then I was in the yellow vehicle, a sense of unreality about it. From hundreds of movies, TV series, the cabs were as familiar as rain. I expected Travis Bickle at the wheel but got a black, wiry guy, asking,

  “Whereto, dude?”

  Told him and we were out of there. Siobhan had booked online, found a place at special rate for ten nights. That was as long as I planned on staying, pick up a piece and head for Tucson, armed and dangerous. The American dream. The hotel was on West Fifty-third, between Fifth and Sixth. I loved just saying the address, it had that shorthand ring, as if you were an old hand. The fare was forty dollars, or forty bucks. Alas, he said dollars, I put ten on top, seemed to do the job. As I got out, I tried,

  “Have a good one.”

  He checked me in the mirror, lazily asked, as if he really couldn’t give a fuck,

  “You Irish, Bro?”

  Shit.

  We Irish are supposed to have the lock on hospitality, the warm welcome, all that blarney crap. The Americans have it down pretty tight. At reception, the staff seemed delighted to see me and downright dizzy that I’d chosen to park there. How would I be paying? In Ireland that means cash or charge? Here it was which credit card? Went with American Express.

  “Keep it country.”

  A bellhop carried my bag and he acted like my new best friend. Okay, I could roll with that. Showed me to a large spacious room and I laid a ten on him. E. B. White said you need to be lucky? Better be loaded too. I’d forgotten the whole scam of tipping. Shit, you’d need a second occupation to keep the services running. He told me to have a good evening and I wanted to go,

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  I was getting a headache from the conflict of accents. I unpacked, didn’t take long, he who travels light is an ex-army brat.

  Then cracked the Bush, poured a large one and took a hefty belt, stood by the window, letting the whiskey warm my stomach.

  It did.

  Red Rock West, one of my favourite movies, was unreeling in my head, part of my whole fuzzy notion of the West. I finished the drink and dumped the travel clothes in the laundry bag, rang room service, and they pledged to come get them.

  Worked for me.

  Showered, shaved, did some exercises from my Brit days. Siobhan had given me Aramis, slapped it on, had a Home Alone moment as it burned like fuck. Got my address book and picked up the phone, rang a bit then,

  “Sí?”

  “Juan . . . How you doing?”

  A moment of silence then,

  “Jesús Maria Cristos . . . Stephan . . . is you?”

  “None other.”

  “You are in Nuevo York?”

  “Alive and kicking.”

  “And Thomas, he is with you?”

  Alive and kicking seemed now to have been the very worst expression, I said,

  “No, he didn’t make it.”

  We arranged to meet at Dino’s, a restaurant in the East Village, I asked,

  “I don’t know it, is it new?”

  “Amigo, in the village, they’re all new.”

  Juan, Tommy, and I had worked on a building site off Lexington Avenue, upholding the Irish tradition of the navy. Our countrymen had built the railways, the roads in the U.K and to hear the Prods tell it, we were now determined to detonate everything
we constructed. The pay was amazing and it didn’t hurt that the union was Mick. The Italians might have the rep for the service industry, but we had a solid grasp on the building game. Overtime was the best scam, you stayed an extra ten minutes and they clocked it as like, five hours. How rich is that? Tommy was probably the most unsuitable person for manual work ever, but I covered for him and plus, he had a way with him, people just liked having him around.

  After work, we’d go for a few cold ones and Juan began to tag along. He had the best dope I ever smoked. Santa Marta gold, the jackpot for potheads, known as blond, it came from the coast of Colombia, had a distinctive aroma, colour, and gave a high that other pot only imitated. You did a spliff, you were paralysed. I wasn’t much taken with dope, I like to stretch my relaxation, slow beers over an evening, conceding control very gradually, settling for a mild buzz.

  Tommy loved it, would do a toke first thing in the morning. I’d be making tea and he’d already have a shit-kicking grin in place. I knew he liked to keep a line from reality, would take anything, Valium, booze, ludes, grass, to maintain the barrier against the world, said to me,

  “Life sucks.”

  Mostly I agreed but felt you needed all your faculties to stay afloat. Siobhan had remarked,

  “He’s the brother you never had.”

  I’d always thought I looked out for Tommy, walked point to his fragile life. When he’d taken the bullet in the face, my whole charade had nearly come crashing down, a thousand times since I’d muttered,

  “You should have seen Stapleton coming.”

  In granite moments I added,

  “Who could have seen him coming?”

  I was outside the hotel now, waiting to grab a cab, and the oddest thing, a mangy cat shot out from behind a parked car, dashed across the street, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a van and I swear, before he disappeared into an alley, he paused, looked right at me, then took off.

  I felt a shiver down my spine, recalling a story Tommy had told me.

  Tommy had brief passions with various things, a book one day, then a movie or a song; for a while, it would be all he could talk about, then just as quickly, he’d drop it, never show the slightest interest again. In Brooklyn he discovered a small bookstore, found a Bukowski and bingo, his new mania. Regaling me morning noon and night with the genius of the guy.

  We were in the apartment one night, trying to decide where we’d go for the crack . . . crack being Irish for fun and almost no relation to the drug. I was at the door, ready to roll, Tommy was slugging from a bottle of Miller, reading, I said,

  “You’re reading now!”

  He didn’t even look up, said,

  “Listen. . . the only battle is to remain as alive as possible.”

  With more than a little acid in my tone, I said,

  “Gee, I’ll try to remember that.”

  He chucked the empty bottle at the waste bin, missed, said,

  “Charlie says —”

  I interrupted, knowing I was seriously irritating him, asked,

  “Whoa, mate, who the hell is Charlie?”

  He gave me a look of real hatred,

  “Bukowski, haven’t you been listening, jeez, Steve, you need to get with the program . . . anyway, he says, anybody can go the way of Dylan Thomas, Ginsberg, Corso, Behan, Leary, Creeley, just sliding down that river of shit, the idea is creation not adulation, the idea is a man in a room alone hacking at a stone and not sucking at the tits of the ground.”

  We were flush with money, the building site was paying our freight in every way. Tommy hailed a cab, told the driver,

  “The Lower East side, let us out at Orchard Street.”

  I asked him,

  “What’s with that?”

  He grimaced, well fed up with me, said,

  “It’s where Charlie would head.”

  When we got out of the cab, we moved onto Delancey Street, and the best I can say about it is, it’s a rundown boulevard. I could just about see the Williamsburg Bridge but Tommy ignored that, turned into a dark-looking bar. Being Irish wasn’t going to help, the place had an air of hostility, Tommy said,

  “Feel the vibe.”

  It was impossible not to, rife with tension. Tommy ordered a couple of boilermakers and we got a table near the window. I could see the dirty looks we were getting from various guys at the counter. Tommy was oblivious, sank the whiskey, said,

  “I could do that.”

  I was distracted, watching the guys watching us, asked,

  “Do what, drink like Bukowski?”

  He was quiet and I turned, saw his face, disappointment, hurt, writ large. I tried to rally, asked,

  “What’s that, seriously, I want to know?”

  But he wouldn’t be drawn, withdrew into himself, began to drink like . . . Bukowski?

  We did a few more rounds and a guy came over, swagger in his eyes, a pool cue in his hand, asked,

  “You faggots not talking to each other?”

  Tommy was never built for combat, that was my department, if the need arose. He was out of his chair in the blink of an eye, had the guy pinned against the wall, going,

  “Do you have a fucking death wish, answer me, you bollix?”

  I got him off the guy and we got out of there without any more hassle. I hailed a cab and we got distance and fast, lest they have a change of heart. Tommy was wringing his hands, said,

  “I wanted to kill that fucker.”

  I got him back to the apartment, poured him a large Jameson, our final bottle of duty free, and he began to roll a joint, said,

  “I need to chill out.”

  I had a Miller, always lots of that in the apartment, Tommy bought it by the case from one of the guys on the site. I put on some music, seemed like a Tom Waits moment and Tommy nodded his head as he heard the strangled voice, he smoked the joint, did the last of the Jameson, then hunched over, asked,

  “I ever tell you about my cat?”

  “What?”

  He wasn’t listening to me, he was telling this to the void, continued,

  “When I was a kid, young, we had a mangy cat, real street urchin, feisty little bastard, fight with anyone, lost an eye in one encounter, didn’t stop him, he continued to mix it up.”

  He looked at me but wasn’t really seeing me, said,

  “Scrawny little tyke, he loved me, straight up, he’d scratch the bejaysus out of most people, but me, he frigging liked me big-time.”

  There was wonder in his voice, as if any creature could feel such about him. I wanted to jump in, stayed silent lest I break the mood, he sighed.

  “One day, he pawed at the door to get out, I thought he was on his usual patrol, roust the locals. Thing is, he was going to die.”

  Tommy fixed his eyes on me, asked,

  “Did you know that, that they go off alone to die?”

  I shook my head.

  He peered into his empty glass, stood up to get some brew, said,

  “Who cares, right, damn cat, the world is full of them.”

  An hour or so later, I called it a night and for a while, I could hear him singing along to Tom . . . then finally, he headed for his bed, stood over me for a moment, whispered,

  “The thing, the thing I wanted to be . . . is a poet.”

  I didn’t know how to reply and even after all this time, I still don’t know. I do know I should have said something.

  “I was sitting in a bar on Western Avenue. It was

  around midnight and I was in my usual confused

  state. I mean, you know, nothing works right; the

  women, the jobs, the no jobs, the weather, the

  dogs. Finally you just sit in a stricken state and

  wait like you’re on the bus stop bench waiting for

  death.

  — CHARLES BUKOWSKI, “No Way to Paradise.”

  I HAILED A CAB outside the hotel, gave him the address. The driver had a pack of Salems beside his coffee holder, reached over, got one going, then
asked,

  “You care if I smoke?”

  No smoking decals were plastered on every available space, I said,

  “Knock yourself out.”

  And got the look. Nice to know some expressions were universal; he must have felt an explanation was necessary, said,

  “You’re wondering what’s with the menthol, am I right?”

  I was wondering why he wouldn’t shut the fuck up, he said,

  “See, I got this, like . . . throat cancer, you know what I’m saying?”

  How complex was it? I grunted in a noncommittal way, you can’t encourage them. They’re off and running anyway, you show a fraction of interest, they’re all over you like the proverbial bad suit. A statue of the Virgin was on the dash, with numerous Rosary beads, medals, relics. He used his cig to indicate the Madonna, asked,

  “You know who that is, huh?”

  I warranted I didn’t and with a triumphant note he said,

  “Our Lady of Guadaloupe, she cured my cancer but I gotta do my bit, you hearing me, you know what I’m telling you?”

  I had the drift.

  “So see, I smoke these here menthols, like penance, god is batting with the triers.”

  I’d always wanted to ask,

  “What about them Knicks?”

  But there’s not a lot of opportunity in Ireland. Like calling dollars “bucks,” we love that stuff. So, I tried it.

  He wasn’t cranked by my response. A Buick shot out from behind us, cut right across and rear-ended another cab. My driver didn’t react and I was bitterly disappointed, I’d wanted him half out of the window, going,

  “The fuck’s the matter with you, muthahfuckah?”

  And such.

  Did I want stereotypes, you betcha. I looked out the window, have to write my own script. Steam was rising out of the manholes, like grey clouds of hope, and I thought,

  “That’s more like it.”

  I’d planned on returning to New York for so long, it had pulled me through many the Irish winter, those Monday mornings, when dawn breaks at nine and evening sets at four! Those days that the rain is personal. I’d close my eyes, summon up a New York minute and be comforted. Tommy and I had been here a year, old hands on the site, Tommy was deep into the rip-offs that occur, tools disappearing, materials gone missing, a whole other economy happening. It’s lucrative and highly dangerous, you’re treading on all sorts of lethal toes. Juan was right along with him, selling to the Mex community who were denied aces to more regular channels.