Emerald Germs of Ireland

by Patrick McCabe

  And what beautiful memories he and Bat would have had between them, if it could ever have been possible! The pair of them sititing below in Sullivan’s, Timmy leaning across the counter and placing his hand under his chin, beaming, “Well, guv! What’s it gonna be tonight?” as Pat and Bat fought wildly over who was going to pay for the drink.

  Except that it hadn’t transpired that way. “Has it?” sighed Pat softly as he rose. And it hadn’t. For Bat McGaw was gone, as a consequence of his actions nothing more now than some piece of forgotten, smoking charcoal.

  Early morning was spreading its gossamer cloak across the countryside. The field was startlingly empty as Pat leaned over the five-barred gate. There was some dew on the ground and thistles, he noted. Far off a truck drove away. “Probably to Belfast or somewhere like that,” Pat sighed. He was relieved now that it was all over. Of course, he knew what they’d say. That it was all his fault, entirely and unequivocally the fault of Pat McNab. That Bat McGaw had never harmed a soul in his life and that only by coming into contact with Pat could anything have …

  Which was exactly the intimation which came his way that very night while he was sitting enjoying a quiet glass of Guinness at the counter in Sullivan’s. A large dairy farmer by the name of O’Coyle, Pat remembered, had edged his way close to him along the stools and eventually intoned darkly behind his newspaper (the Evening Herald), “Take care some night would something happen to you, as happened to poor Bat McGaw.”

  It had been pure coincidence that the packet of Maguire and Patterson Friendly matches was placed directly in front of Pat. But fortunate, for within seconds O’Coyle’s entire Evening Herald was engulfed in flames.

  “Jesus! Jesus Christ Almighty!” cried O’Coyle, haplessly endeavoring to extinguish the fire with his sports coat. “Jesus Mary and Joseph, did you see that! Did youse see what he did?”

  But Pat was already gone, the comments either way on the incident of as much concern to him as the cow pat some days later which was directly beside his foot as he hummed softly to himself, industriously snipping the catkins directly above him and neatly arranging them in a plastic basin which he had brought along for that specific purpose. Yes, the comments were indeed of little consequence to him, he thought, as he bundled the snipped furry sticks in his arms. And why might that be? Why, because he lived in Town of Liars, of course! Town where behind every curtain sits someone waiting to make up lies about you, certainly, but most of all about your mother!

  Pat stood back and cleaned his hands with a cloth. The catkins looked nice in the vase on the mantelpiece, he thought. He knew his mother would have liked that. He felt proud.

  Which indeed he was. And as he sat watching the “ballerinas of flame” perform so beautifully for him in the grate that night, Pat could not help but think, as his eyes moved even closer to the heart of the fire, that one of those tender creatures bore the face of his own mother, pale and wan and serene, smiling out at him—waving, indeed!—as she parted her lips and whispered, “Memories, Pat love. Remember the memories!” and as her kiss a litde butterfly became, in that instant he saw them both, together in the open field, now waltzing hand in hand, high in the trees the birds ecstatic in the catkins, as she ruffled his hair and tweaked his cheek, her eyes all moist but twinkling as she cried, “Pat, alanna! Pat, our litde tune!” and the countryside rang out—like a living thing!—as to the horizon now they danced, two exultant tiny figures singing:

  But old flames can ‘I hold a candle to you

  No one can light up the night like you do

  Flickering embers of lave I’ve known one or two

  But old flames can’t hold a candle to you.

  South of the Border

  South of the border down Mexico way

  That’s where I fell in love when stars above came out to play

  And now as I wander, my thoughts ever stray

  South of the border down Mexico way

  Chorus

  Then she sighed as she whispered, “Mañana”

  Never dreamed that we were parting

  And I lied as I whispered, “Mañana,” for our tomorrow never came.

  South of the border I rode back one day

  There in a veil of white by candlelight she knelt to pray

  The mission bells told me that I couldn’t stay

  South of the border down Mexico way.

  Ay! Ay! Ay!—Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!

  There are a lot of people who would claim in mitigation where Pat’s case is concerned, whether perhaps out of a sense of responsibility toward him, or because of their long-term acquaintanceship with his family (some of them would have been, without doubt, witnesses to Captain McNab’s departure on that fateful day in 1964 when he slung his kit bag across his shoulder and snapped back at his dumbstruck wife, “I’m off now, you old shite bag, and don’t think that I’ll be back, for I won’t—you can rest assured of that!”), that he had, in the circumstances, demonstrated remarkable degrees of resourcefulness. Indeed, there might even be among them some prepared to advance even more extraordinary claims, along the lines of Pat’s “being an example to all of us” what with his being so good as he actually was, considering all he had been through. “He could, for example,” they might be likely to assert, “have ended up taking drugs. The least we can allow him is that much credit.” Their desire to do well by Pat and extend toward him some measure of empathy and affection, however small, is of course, wholly creditable. For Pat, unquestionably, had many good sides to him, and was not like some of the foul miscreants who clog up our courts and prisons today and merit punishments far greater than are ever likely to be administered. But neither was he—and I am not about to suggest any such thing—a saint, by any manner of means. He was more than capable—quite apart from what we might term his “under the laurel bush” and “digging” episodes—of transgressing in many other ways. Transgressions which, sadly—and this is not intended as any slight upon the magnanimous people to whom I have earlier referred (i.e., Pat’s would-be benefactors)—included the consumption of drugs. Nevertheless, it is true, albeit coming about quite by accident, and at the insistence of others who ought to have had more sense.

  The “chain of events” saw its beginning one heady summer’s afternoon when Pat found himself standing by the roadside clutching under his arm a very large book which had as its subject philosophy, perception, and the modulating nature of reality. It was upon such matters he was ruminating, vigorously stroking his chin, when he looked up to descry two figures emerging from the shimmering wall of heat haze that had established itself between Maguire’s Gap and the creamery wall close to the dip in the road. It did not take him very long to realize that he was being approached by some colleagues he had not laid eyes upon since primary school and who were already gesticulating in his direction.

  “Hey look! There’s Pat McNab!” cried Pasty McGookin, with the sun’s light lancing off the golden buckle of his tattered Wrangler denim trousers.

  “Hey!” cried his companion Honky McCool, breaking into a trot which was hampered slightly by the flapping of his knitted Mexican poncho and the awkwardness of his flip-flop sandals.

  But nonetheless, within seconds they were standing by Pat’s side.

  “That’s not a bad day now, lads,” Pat said cheerily. “There’s a power of heat in that sun yonder.”

  “There is!” agreed Pasty. “Do you mind if we sit beside you, Pat? We’re frigged with the walking, aren’t we, Honky?”

  Honky nodded and gave a small, somewhat distracted wave.

  “Be my guest,” Pat said, moving over a litte. “It’s a free country.”

  “Aye!” chirped Pasty, leaping up onto the fence. “For who’d buy it?”

  “What’s that, Pasty?” said Pat, taken a little aback by Pasty’s forthrightness. For it has to be remembered that he had not seen him in quite a long time. Since they had both been in fourth class under the tutelage of Master Halpin, in fact.

  Pasty sho
ok his head and continued.

  “Look, Pat—all I’m saying is it’s doing my head in! Every morning—up the town, round by Pick and Choose, past McCormack’s, and then into Sullivan’s. I just can’t take any more of it, man!”

  “Any more of what, Pasty?” replied Pat, a trifle awkwardly.

  A rolled-up cigarette mysteriously appeared in the bowl of Pasty’s hand and almost magically transferred itself to the aperture between his lips as he continued.

  “I’m getting out of this town, Pat! I’m blowing it! And to hell with them! You talk to Honky here about it! You talk to the Man, Pat! He’ll tell you some stories! He’ll put some pictures in your head!”

  “Pictures in my head?” Pat replied—almost squeaked, in fact.

  Pasty nodded with some passion.

  “You talk to him! He’ll show you some things! Take you places you never even dreamed of going to. Right, Honky?”

  It was just then Pat noticed how exhausted Honky’s eyes seemed, and how long it actually appeared to take for him to make a response of any kind to what might be construed as the simplest of questions. But he thought nothing of it and nodded as Pasty continued:

  “Fact is, Pat—we only got o ce. You got one chance—don’t blow it, man! Right, Honky?”

  Honky nodded and, surprisingly, Pat reflected, replied in an accent that was not contiguous with the locality. It seemed quite Spanish, in fact.

  “There ees no choice. Ees up to you, my frien’.”

  “You see! I told you!” cried Pasty, slapping Pat firmly on the back. “Honky’s the main man! It’ll only cost you ten pound!”

  Pat frowned.

  “What will?” he asked. “What’ll cost me ten pound?”

  Pasty contemplated the toes of his brown, once-polished cowboy boots with the faded engravings.

  “Ah, Pat—come on now!” he went on. “Honky didn’t come all the way from Mexico for you to start that.”

  Pat stared at the small hill of his index-finger knuckle.

  “Mexico?” he said.

  Pasty’s eyes lit up.

  “Aye!” he cried. “Wasn’t he out there this past ten years? Where the hell do you think he got it? Ah, come on now, Pat!”

  “Got it? Got what?” asked Pat, puzzled.

  Without warning, Pasty leaped down from his position on the fence, taking his companion by the arm.

  “Ah, to hell with this!” he said. “Come on, Honky! We’re wasting our time here!”

  He jabbed a contemptuous finger at Pat’s philosophy book and looked askance at its owner.

  “And you supposed to be the big-time philosopher!”

  Honky fixed him with a sleepy stare through the tiny vents that were his eyes.

  “The doors enclose the darkness, my frien’,” he remarked, with a touch of sadness.

  “Come on—let us go,” said Pasty, taking a step forward.

  “No! Don’t go!” cried Pat suddenly.

  Pasty’s reply was firm and instantaneous.

  “Well, you needn’t think you’re getting it for nothing!” he said.

  Pat remained puzzled by this.

  “But getting what, Pasty?” he wished to know.

  “Show him, Honky,” was the denim-clad youth’s response.

  There was something weighted, epochal, about Honky’s movements as his knitted poncho moved slowly back and out from under it appeared his bronzed hand, within it located a small, glistening ball of silver paper.

  “The sacred root of the Samalayuca tribe,” he intoned gravely. “Ees peyote. The key to ze truth so many eons past. You want or no?”

  Pat hesitated.

  “Well, I…,” he began.

  Pasty tugged impatiently at a tassel on his poncho.

  “Come on, Honky!” he barked. “We’ve work to do! We might as well be pegging stones in bog holes as talking to McNab!”

  “No!” cried Pat.

  “Ten pound, then!” snapped Pasty. “And no more of this acting the tube!”

  His stare was unequivocal. Behind him, two giant legs of sunlight pirouetted in Main Street.

  “Come on in here behind this tree,” said Pasty.

  Quite what transpired in those few short moments afterward, Pat was never to be quite certain. All he knew was that, as the peyote was passed around—with a pronounced sense of devotion, he observed—a curious quality entered the pupils of both Pasty’s and Honky’s eyes—and, Pat presumed, his own. Its nature could be described, perhaps, as possessing a “zinging” aspect. Whatever the terminology employed to encapsulate its character and texture, what was undeniable was the effect it had, particularly upon Honky, who had now begun to flail his arms and dart direcdonlessly about the undergrowth, crying: “We got to get out of here! Ees the crimson-headed devil with horns which gorge your eyes! El conjeito verde! El conjeito verde! Hasta luego! Hasta luego.”

  His companion responded instantly, if a litde anxiously.

  “Stop it, Honky!” he cried. “Don’t go starting that crack again!”

  “He devours our insides with the tongue of a lizard!” replied Honky. ? diablos!’

  Pasty squeezed the flesh of his colleague’s arm fiercely.

  “Stop it—do you hear me?” he insisted, turning to Pat and saying, “He started this before, you know!”

  Pat responded with a smile. He thought of it as “shot through” with the sun’s translucent light.

  “The sky,” he reflected, “it’s peachy pink.”

  But Pasty did not hear Pat’s remark, for his irritation with his companion had deepened, and he was now, despite himself, shouting at him.

  “Stop it!” he cried. “Stop it or I’ll burst you! Do you hear me, Honky?”

  Suddenly the red-and-cream nose of a traveling vehicle declared itself, making its way out of the thick-slabbed fence of heat. Taking himself totally by surprise, Pat found himself crying, in tones of near-childlike stridency, “Here comes the bus!”

  “Thanks be to Jesus!” cried Honky, a mysterious calm descending upon him.

  “That’ll be ninety pee, lads,” said the driver, whistling a small, abstracted tune.

  Some seconds elapsed before Pat succeeded in locating the words for which he had been striving. “Where are you going?” he said.

  His smile—in its sheer breadth—seemed to indicate that it was the happiest, sunniest day of his life. But it was not enough to distract him from the unmistakable alteration in the driver’s tone and the shadowy shrinkage of his expression beneath the polished slopes of his eye-covering peak.

  “We’re crossing the border in half an hour,” he said.

  Pat gasped.

  “Half an hour?” he said.

  He could barely release the words.

  “Next stop Ballinafad!” called the driver as the doors flapped closed and Pat took his seat, followed by Honky, who continued to kiss the driver’s hand and repeat, “Thanks be to Jesus! Drive me pliss through doorways of dreams, thees place I wann’ go! You, my friend, I shall treasure for ever, beautiful driver of buses!”

  “Isn’t he an awful man!” chirped Pasty to a woman who was staring at them, simultaneously endeavoring to determine beyond doubt the presence of his hand in the pocket of his denim jacket. “Him and the auld chat of him!”

  The woman had a furry collar on her coat and two bags (plastic) full of shopping on the floor beside her. There was a smell of musty perfume off her as she turned (it seemed to take her an age) and said, “Where are you headed, boys?”

  Pat noted with interest the dimensions of her lips. They appeared to suit themselves in this regard, expanding and retracting at will, at once exhibiting a tubrous quality and rendering themselves insignificant and threadlike almost to the point of invisibility.

  Pasty split a match and inserted it beneath a nicotine-stained fingernail.

  “We’re headed south,” he said, in a sonorous voice that seemed to disappear beneath the floor of the bus and reemerge from its grease-caked interior.
>
  The woman nodded and gripped the top of the seat.

  “Are youse going to see friends or are youse just going for the drive?”

  “Oh, just for the—” began Pasty as Honky’s stabbing arm shot up in front of him and he cried:

  “Pasty! You got to help me, please! The demon has horns of gleaming jade! Help me, my brother! You got to! No! No, please! He eats my soul for breakfast!”

  Pasty slapped him firmly on the back of the head and silence descended once again. Pasty smiled and said, “It must be the hot weather. Ha ha,” he explained to the woman.

  She shrugged good-naturedly.

  “Sure, pass no remarks! My Paddy is far worse!” she said, referring, presumably, to her life partner of thirty-five years.

  Pat did not expect to encounter trees that possessed a greenness so intense that you would almost require Polaroid sunglasses to look upon them. But this was exactly what happened as they found themselves disembarking. Neither did he consider that a bird of multicolored plumage would address him in perfect English—albeit with an accent—from the irregular topography of a nearby elm bough, but this too is what transpired. As for the sounds all about him—why, it was as though sound itself had become color and was sparkling, melting in the manner of a child’s crayon subjected to the intense heat of a flaring match. Pat nodded as far away the driver’s voice rang out, “There now, boys! Youse are on your own now!”

  Within seconds the vehicle was but as an infinitesimal cream-and-red speck swallowed up by an engulfing cloud of dust. Somewhere close by there was the sound of a whistling wind. “Strange,” thought Pat, “as up until this moment, it has been quite a sunny, pleasant day.”

  Pat noted that each of his companions was moving as if each had been somehow inexplicably fitted with standard issue deep-sea diving boots, the movements of their other limbs slow and languid also, but not, it could be deemed, without a lyricism that was both strange and beautiful.