by Colum McCann
I ask him what he’s talking about, and he reaches in under the counter and pulls out about twenty of these quarters. They spill through his goddamn fingers. Jefferson with a peace sign on his forehead, another with the LIBERTY shortened to BERT, the eagle wearing a bra, all sorts of colors everywhere. Says he likes to collect them himself when customers come from the Rose down the street. Says to me that the guys at the Rose, and sometimes the girls, bring the quarters in. One of the afternoon strippers there makes them.
“They put them in the jukebox,” he says, “so at the end of the night they know which quarters are theirs. You see red ones and green ones and blue ones and all sorts. But these are great. This chick is an artist. I’d like to see this chick dance.”
I don’t know much about things, but I do know that it’s amazing, the things we don’t know. I went home that evening and wanted to drive that Karmen Ghia right through the greenhouse, plow it right on through, shatter it into pieces. Laura got home, late, and just went straight on out to the greenhouse. She looked awful young and pretty. She swept past me and said: “You look tired, honey.” She actually said that. She said “honey.” I sat there, in the kitchen, wondering what sort of face she was drawing this time.
FISHING THE SLOE-BLACK RIVER
The women fished for their sons in the sloe-black river that ran through the small Westmeath town, while the fathers played football without their sons, in a field half a mile away. Low shouts drifted like lazy swallows over the river, interrupting the silence of the women. They were casting with ferocious hope, twenty-six of them in unison, in a straight line along the muddy side of the low-slung river wall, whipping the rods back over their shoulders. They had pieces of fresh bread mashed onto hooks so that when they cast their lines, the bread volleyed out over the river and hung for a moment, making curious contours in the air—cartwheels and tumbles and plunges. The bread landed with a soft splash on the water, and the ripples met each other gently.
The aurora borealis was beginning to finger the sky with light the color of skin, wine bottles, and the amber of the town’s football jerseys. Drowsy clouds drifted, catching the colors from the north. A collie dog slept in the doorway of the only pub. The main street tumbled with litter.
The women along the wall stood yards apart, giving each other room so their lines wouldn’t tangle. Mrs. Conheeny wore a headscarf patterned with Corgi dogs, the little animals yelping at the side of her ashy hair. She had tiny dollops of dough still stuck under her fingernails. There were splashes of mud on her Wellingtons. She bent her back into the familiar work of reeling in the empty line. Each time she cast, she curled her upper lip, scrunching up the crevices around her cheeks. She was wondering how Father Marsh, the old priest for whom she did housekeeping, was doing as goalkeeper. The joke around town was that he was only good for saving souls. As she spun a little line out from the reel she worried that her husband, at right-halfback, might be feeling the ache in his knee from ligaments torn long ago.
Leaning up against the river wall, tall and bosom-burdened, she sighed and whisked her fishing rod through the air.
Beside her Mrs. Harrington, the artist’s wife, was a salmon leap of energy, thrashing the line back and forth as deftly as a fly-fisherwoman, ripping crusts from her own loaves, impaling them on the big gray hook and spinning them out over the water’s blackness, frantically tapping her feet up and down on the muddy bank. Mrs. Harrington’s husband had been shoved in at left full-forward in the hope that he might poke a stray shot away in a goalmouth frenzy. But by all accounts—or so Mr. Conheeny said—the watercolor man wasn’t worth a barman’s fart on the football field. Then again, they all laughed, at least he was a warm body. He could fill a position against the other teams in the county, all of whom still managed to gallop, here and there, with young bones.
Mrs. Conheeny scratched at her forehead. Not a bite, not a bit, not a brat around, she thought as she reeled in her line and watched a blue chocolate wrapper get caught in a gust of wind, then float down onto the water.
The collie left the door of the pub, ambling down along the main street, past the row of townhouses, nosing in the litter outside the newsagents. Heavy roars keened through the air as the evening stole shapes. Each time the women heard the whistle blow, they raised their heads in the hope that the match was finished so they could unsnap the rods and bend toward home with their picnic baskets.
Mrs. Conheeny watched Mrs. Hynes across the river, her face plastered with makeup, tentatively clawing at a reel. Mrs. King was there with her graphite rod. Mrs. McDaid had come up with the idea of putting currants in her bread. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was whipping away with a long slender piece of bamboo—did she think she was fishing in the Mississippi? Mrs. Bergen, her face scrunched in pain from the arthritis, was hoping her fingers might move a little better, like they used to on the antique accordion. Mrs. Kelly was sipping from her little silver flask of the finest Jameson’s. Mrs. Hogan was casting with firefly flicks of the wrist. Mrs. Docherty was hauling in her line, as if gathering folds in her dress. And Mrs. Hennessy was gently peeling the crust from a slice of Brennan’s.
Farther down along the pebbledashed wall, Mrs. McCarton was gently humming a bit of a song. Flow on lovely river flow gently along, by your waters so clear sounds the lark’s merry song. Her husband captained the team, a barrel of a man who, when he was young, consistently scored a hat trick. But the team hadn’t won a game in two years, ever since the children had begun their drift.
They waited, the women, and they cast, all of them together.
When the long whistle finally cut through the air and the colors took on forms that flung themselves against the northern sky, the women slowly unsnapped their rods and placed the hooks in the lowest eyes. They looked at each other and nodded sadly. Another useless day fishing. Opening picnic baskets and lunch boxes, they put the bread away and waited for the line of Ford Cortinas and Vauxhalls and Opel Kaddets and Mr. Hogan’s blue tractor to trundle down and pick them up.
Their husbands arrived with their amber jerseys splattered with mud, their faces long in another defeat, cursing under taggles of pipes, their old bones creaking at the joints.
Mrs. Conheeny readjusted her scarf and watched for her husband’s car. She saw him lean over and ritually open the door even before he stopped. She ducked her head to get in, put the rod and basket in the backseat. She waved to the women who were still waiting, then took off her headscarf.
“Any luck, love?” he asked.
She shook her head: “I didn’t even get a bite.”
She looked out to the sloe-black river as they drove off, then sighed. One day she would tell him how useless it all was, this fishing for sons, when the river looked not a bit like the Thames or the Darling or the Hudson or the Loire or even the Rhine itself, where their own three sons were working in a car factory. He slapped his hands on the steering wheel and said with a sad laugh: “Well, fuck it anyway, we really need some new blood in midfield,” although she knew that he too would go fishing that night, silently slipping out, down to the river, to cast in vain.
AROUND THE BEND AND BACK AGAIN
Strange bloody cuckoo, that one. Couple of rhododendrons hanging in her hair. Chewing on her fingernails like she’s starving. Spent yesterday afternoon circling one of the puddles out by the greenhouse, just walking round and round like there’s no tomorrow. Trailed mud all over the bloody floor after I swishbuckled the fucking thing to a shine. Nothing to be said for consideration. But she’s not half bad all the same. Dressing gown giving a bit of a peep there, right down to the brown of the nipple. The way she just stares there out the window, you’d swear there was something on television in the bloody stars. Here we go with the Plough and the Stars, starring Tom bloody Cruise. She needs a bit of a haircut though, those long strands going mad all the way over her mouth. Dolores, giving her a bath yesterday, said she was a bit ripe under the armpits. Who wouldn’t be after hanging around town for days without a bloody bat
h? Singing some fucking song when they stuck a toothbrush down her gob. And enough tranquilizers in her to knock out a good horse.
She’s your one from the railway family. Recognized her the minute they dragged her in. Moved here from Dublin with her Ma and Da about twelve years back and lived up there in that old orange caboose at the bottom of the hills. Strange fucking place that, railway carriage sitting out in the middle of nowhere. Propped up on cement blocks and all. Surrounded by flower beds and stone walls and green fields, no wonder she went barmy. Choo fucking choo here we go down the valley. She was choo-chooing all right when the cops brought her up here, smashing her little brown curls against the door of the squad car, going crazy with something about her caboose.
Never forget my first sight of that thing years back, on the back of a huge bloody truck, getting carted up from the railway station. Along it comes down main street, almost shit myself. Big orange thing, gone a bit rusty after sitting at the ends of the tracks for so long. One hell of a job that. Must have cost a damn fortune for her old man to hire that truck and a winch and ten hefty men to help cart it up to the hills. I remember her looking out the window as it went round the corner, bewildered as fuck, her no more than eight years old, ribbons in her hair. I was only six myself, that big old bandage on my hand from when I let a firework go off in my fist. Along I went running after the damn thing but it was way too fast. All the other lads went up to the valley later on, where they were propping it up on blocks and asked if she could come out to play. No, says her Da, she has to study. We all knew he was a weirdo after that.
Her Da was one of those fellas who look at the stars and make maps. Like Darryl Hannah in that film Roxanne with your man with the big nose. But her Da was just a little fella in a black beret. Always hanging out at that caboose he was. There was a huge bloody telescope sticking out of the roof sometimes. Talk was that he slept during the day and worked at night and once he even made a trip to California to look through a mighty telescope there. Might make an accounting for the Plough and the Stars stuff that she’s up to tonight, rocking away there by the window, kneeling on the bed, staring out the window like she’s saying her prayers. Right beside Maggie the Moaner too. That’s some pair. And just wait until Georgie girl comes back. There’ll be ructions then, I swear.
Her Ma was a strange one too. Wrote books on flower arranging. Grand topic that, as long as you’ve had a decent lobotomy in the last six months. She was always off to the flower shows with all sorts of buckets in the backseat of the car. How she kept from bouncing around with all the fucking potholes in the road around here I’ll never know. Used to see her the odd time down by the river examining flowers with one of those microscope things. There’s some strange people live around here, that’s for sure.
I was having a nap in the stock room and the nurses were nattering away about her. Seems her old man liked the horses as well as the stars. Before the car crash on the Swinford Road he put a load of money on some horse called Tycho in the fifth at Leopardstown. Old Tycho fell at the second fence and the old man never told anyone that the caboose suddenly belonged to some bank up beyond in Dublin. Rough that. One day you’re doing grand, living in a caboose, the old fella looking at the stars, the old dear tending the flowerpots and things are not so bad at all at all. The next day your Ma and Da are smashed in a car on that fucking bend in the Swinford Road, the will is worth shit, and before you know it the bank owns the caboose and you haven’t two pennies to rub together. Bob’s your uncle, you’re out on the street, two plastic bags in your hands, Dunnes Stores better value beats them all.
No wonder she’s sitting there shaking like crazy.
Nurses were saying that the bank let her live in the caboose for the best part of six months after the crash, and that’s true enough because I saw her up there one day myself, and she was just sitting in a lawn chair watching the world go by, happy as Larry. Gave her a wave but I don’t think she saw me. But the bank is doing talks with the mining company now, so she’s out on her ear, poor girl. Bank manager gave her a loan of a flat down by the newspaper offices a few days ago, but she wouldn’t stay. Bit stupid that. Guards found her walking up the road towards the caboose every bloody minute of the day, her screaming and shouting something about looking after her old dear’s flower beds. I seen her myself once down under the bridge and she was roaring her head off, all those flowers in her hair. Gave her a wave then too, but it was the same bloody thing. That’s madness if you ask me. Standing freezing in the middle of the bloody river.
And she’s a wild one too. Had to grab a hold of her feet when they brought her here. Strong as an ox. Wonder Woman, how are ya. Barney was a bit rough with her all the same. He shouldn’t have slapped her across the gob like that when the nurses weren’t looking. Said she spat at him, but Barney’s a fierce one for lying sometimes. Bet she’s another one for breaking the toilet seats wait till you see, that’s what Barney said. He’s probably right but he shouldn’t have slapped her one anyway. Barney-boy has a thing with the toilet seats. Hates scrubbing the damn things. He’s always bulling about the globs of shite left around the bowl. And he gets even worse when the madwomen get to standing on the seat and aiming from on high.
Still and all, she’s quiet now after all the rumpus. Strange what might go on in a head like that, her there staring out the window of the dorm. Dolores said she caught a goo of her many a time up there on the roof of the caboose with her old man, before the crash. Staring at these maps with a small red torch they were. Something to do with night vision or something. Help them watch the goings on. There’ll be none of that for a while. Only stars she’ll be seeing are the ones from those little yellow pills they’re shoving down her throat. Her and Georgina’ll have a ball when they bring Georgie back from Dublin. That’s what Georgina gets for being a speed freak anyway. Ice water injected into the veins. Nasty stuff. Sends the heart rate rocketing. Her and Georgie’ll be the youngest ones in the whole bloody ward. And Georgie’s a fierce one for pissing on the floors. In I go to clean the toilet up and it’s slippery as all fuck.
* * *
Johnnie Logan’s going nuts over the mining boys. Says they should stay the hell out. But he’s all set, he is, with his Opel bloody Manta and his four-bedroom house and a seat on the County Council. Man like that doesn’t need a new job, unlike me and Barney. If he keeps those mining boys out it’ll be a good thump in the head from Barney, that’s for sure. And I’ll never vote for the bastard again. He used to be one hell of a boyo, getting that strike settled for the union and all, but like Barney says he’s barking up the wrong tree this time.
* * *
Ferocious bloody hangover this evening. Out on the piss in the Humbert with Barney in the broads of broad daylight. Smithwick’s. Nectar of the dogs, says Barney. And a fierce drink for the scuts.
Anyway, it’s all signed sealed and delivered, says Barney. The bank sold your woman’s caboose to the mining company. Off they are now doing speculations in the hills. There’s gold in dem dere hills, as the boys in the wild west say. Word around is that there might be jobs when the mining boys get their act together, which’d be a damnsight better than cleaning the bin, that’s for sure. Johnnie Logan’s bulling, but it serves him right, him and all the other greenies around. There’ll be a road up the mountain, no ifs, ands, or buts. They can all go to Kerry or Majorca or the south of bloody France if they want a bit of peace and quiet.
Went up there myself for a goo. Mining boys already put a big insignia on the side of the caboose. Picture of a mountain with the sun coming up over it. It’ll be a sunny bloody morning if they hire myself and Barney, that’s for sure. Those boys have money. You can be sure of that. We’ll be laughing and it might even bring a few of the lads home from Amsterdam or the Bronx or wherever the hell they’re gone. They put some barbed wire around the old carriage and already got themselves a few JCBs and a couple of churners, a pile of gravel and a big blue Dumpster. There’s no flower beds there any more, th
at’s for sure. Looks a bit different than it used to but that’s the way it goes. Jobs are jobs. There’ll be hell to pay if they don’t hire local lads, all the same.
Your woman must know about the caboose because she threw a nasty one tonight. Out they were doing all sorts of maneuvers to hold her down, the Heimlich and all that stuff. The only doctor on was that skinny bloke who stinks of garlic. Nurses had to call me out from the kitchen, where I was doing the scrubbing, to give them a hand. Six of us there including Barney, but he went a bit easier with her this evening. Dressing gown all over the place and she’s a good-looking woman, all the same. Barney asked me if I sprung a hard-on. He’s a filthy bastard sometimes. Anyway, out of her pockets comes tumbling a load of sachets of sugar that she must have stolen from the bowls in the dining area. Dozens of the damn things spilling all over the floor. In the little white packets. Maybe she has a sweet tooth.
Eventually calmed the hissy-fit though, the lot of us together. On with the gray gown, out with the shoelaces, give us that necklace, darling, and it’s off down to solitary with the soft white stuff on the walls. Don’t be banging your little brown curls around this time.
Must be awful hard all the same, losing the parents and the caboose like that. The nurses call her Ofeelia on account of the flowers in her hair. Can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her, even if Barney says it’s her own fault. Twenty years old and it’s not much better than the fucking slophouse.
Still no sign of the Georgie one. They must be doing all sorts of tests on her up beyond in the big smoke. Dymphna O’Connor got the thumbs up today and it’s off back to Kiltimagh for her. But the place was a fucking mess. There was a tampon shoved down the inside of the third stall and the rubber gloves had taken a hike. Mary Marshall at it again. They should teach that woman some manners. Barney told me a funny joke about Eve in the river but I can’t for the life of me remember it now. One of these days me and Barney are going to get new jobs. No doubt about it. We’ll be up there with the mining boys wearing three-piece suits and colorful ties and the doctors at the bin can lick the piss off the floors themselves.
