Heartland, page 10
Fourteen children was a lot to have to have, he whooped, so what if his mother had had to wash their clothes in the river.
–Because if the truth be told, he went on, there were a lot of people in Glasson County who’d had to do the same. Yes, and had tramped to school wearing hand-me-down rags, looking no different to any of the Munleys. And, just the very same as them, had had to wash their clothes in throwaway plastic buckets filled with water from a drainpipe.
He forcefully struck another chair.
–So what? Wee Hughie rasped. What in the fuck about it, yeah? Just do me the courtesy of calling a halt to your gossip – and calling me ‘Patches’ whenever I’m not around.
–Nobody’s calling you Patches, Big Barney protested, no one at all. You’ve just got it into your head. Everyone knows you’re a great comedian, that there’s no one in Glasson who can makes us laugh like you.
–I’ve had enough of this already! barked Sonny. Do you hear me now? More than enough – so give it a fucking rest.
Then the Runt stepped forward and announced that this time, for certain, he was going to be sick. Yes, this time for sure.
–And bad, he gulped, I know – I can tell. I know. I’ve got the shivers, you see, them shakes that sometimes come on me. Then I know it’s coming. My stomach, you see, it gets all tore up.
–His stomach, from time to time, it gets all tore up, explained his brother.
–These feelings, when I get them, it’s sort of like I’m not gonna make it. Like someone is trying to tell me – you’re not going to make it this time, Runt. Because that’s the way. That’s the way it’s been decided it must be.
–Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s fucking raining, sneered Red Campbell, because the truth fucking is that neither of you ought to have ever been brought near the place. Whoever’s fucking idea it was.
–Take him out, Sonny Hackett ordered, take him away on out to fuck and get the daisyboy some fresh air. Get him some fresh air, I said. For all the addition that he is around here.
–OK, replied Shorty, somewhat cowedly, leading his brother towards the door, indeed retching himself.
With the whole bar shuddering as the door closed loudly behind them.
It would have to have been around the time that Jody Kane found himself waking in his cell – having passed out already a number of times.
I want to tell you everything, Ray, he had written in one of his most special letters, just like I did my wildflower rose.
Greta Mae.
My partner, my love.
There’s nothing that she doesn’t know about the two of us, Ray – even what happened with that lousy motherfucking dog Johnny Redlegs. You’ll find in the end it’s the only thing to do, look into the mirror and be honest with yourself, no matter what you might see reflected there. Because, all our lives, we been caged birds, Ray. And now, at long last, it’s time to spread our wings and learn to fly. That’s what I told her.
So who cares what happened to the two of us back in Whiterock? If, at the end of the day, you can find yourself fortunate enough to come across a sweet and beautiful angel who not only is happy to be in your company, but who understands you and is content to have you place a golden wedding ring upon her finger. Just like I have been more than proud to do, in a little church that her family have worshipped in for generations, the White Chapel. Not that I’m pretending to be in any way religious – not to the same degree as her, at any rate.
But she’s working on me, and I got to say I ain’t complaining, knowing how blessed I have been for both our paths to cross in this world. For us ever to have managed to meet in the first place.
My wildwood flower and me – did I tell you we’ve put a holding payment down on a place of our own already?
Because we have, old friend, on a little cabin in the woods up here in the mountains.
I know it’s nothing fancy, but what you got to understand, and I think I know that you will, Ray, is that it’s home.
And which is something I learned early on from that sweet little flower that I am privileged to call my own – to comprehend the value of such an unexpected blessing, do you know what I’m saying? Because ever since meeting her all of my anger seems to have fallen away. Sometimes I can’t believe my luck. Because when the two of us first met, I still was that old bitter, resentful Jody Kane – numbed with pain, gloomy, and often ferocious. And I know I drank way more than my share. Yes, that was the case, but I’m willing to admit it. That I was aggrieved and disputatious, carrying all kinds of envies and imagined injustices. Something which I can laugh about now.
Sometimes when I look at her, the words to describe what I feel for her, they evade me and seem just that little bit beyond my reach.
Except when I listen to Hank or Patsy Cline. Then I can find ’em. If we make it through December, Merle Haggard sings – do you remember that one, Ray?
I’ll bet you do.
They used to play it all the time in Heartland.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving her, Greta Mae.
My one and only sweet little wildwood flower.
Come on out and see us, Ray – you got to.
Adios for now, you hearing me OK?
Not long after the brothers had gone out to get themselves some air, Jody had felt himself coming close to giving up, he’d confided in me.
Because, although the beatings themselves had been bad enough, he’d begun to think that perhaps they had administered some kind of drug – slipped him a shot of something when he’d been lying there, out cold on the floor of the van, on the way over from the One Tree Crossroads.
Because nothing had seemed to be working inside his head.
He had repeated that many times in his letters.
In his efforts to free himself of the cable ties, one of the drums of diesel had fallen over and thudded against his toe-and was now lying on its side as a large patch of oil began spreading out between his feet, the pain of the recent bruise already close to unbearable.
As, he recalled, those slow melting rainbow colours of the expanding map of oil gradually seemed to be returning him to those faraway days in the orphanage, in Whiterock.
When we’d ramble aimlessly in the High Country meadow, just lying there admiring the endless blue and white canyon of the sky, in a rolling field carpeted with beautiful golden primroses, where our old friend Sgt Redlegs would regale us with more of his extraordinary, magical stories.
–Trooper Johnny at your service, fellers, we would hear him announce as he gave us the regimental salute, the hero of Dixie who fought for God and the gallant South. So git on over here, fellers, and let us join in prayer, as we implore the Lord to bring Sweet Death and all her emissaries to the homes of all them bluebelly dawgs – hur hur!
He had a ‘drop of the tinker’ in him too. I remember they always used to insist that he too was part of that same dispossesed, roving tribe – a wandering, restless, migratory soul.
–Like all of our kindred, little feller, he would tell him, you and me is brothers of the Pawnee. Yup, us’n’s belong to the indomitable outlaw breed – and that’s a sure certain fact, Jody Kane.
He had been all over the world, he told us, but specifically the vast and spectacular continent of America.
–That old Redleg Johnny, he don’t have no dreams, he used to say, on account of being who he is, and the seed and breed of his kind that was sired under bloodied stars – no, it has been ordained that he ain’t entitled to no such luxury. At least not in the way regular folks as obeys the laws of their Maker might be. Sure, that’s what they’ll tell you, fellers, and I ought to know – because, believe you me, I been listening to that trash for most, if not all, of my misbegotten, unrequested borned days. With the difference being, my two young compadres, that folks as toss them words into the wind, shit from shinola is what they know. Because I am going to tell you a story, boys. Yep, a little campfire yarn as we sit there together in the huge blue rectangle of the night, gazing far beyond them hills to where the horizon meets its end. And where, once upon a time, long before your innocence was ever breathed upon the air, in the aftermath of an undecided battle, there was a soldier who ploughed his way through the smoke, upon his mount. Yes, an exhausted horseman bedecked in slouch hat and gleaming black rain slicker, having now decided, once and for all, to make his way back to the place of his birth. Yes, fellers, to leave it all behind him – and, as best he could, make his way through the many corpses littered about the dead land, in order that he might, finally, be in a position to say goodbye to that little valley which had made him. And for which, in the most curious fashion, in spite of all its shortcomings, he somehow still reserved a special place in his heart. What he liked to describe as a private corner of consecrated sorrow and regret – for what might have been, you understand. And so he rode on through a hail of minnie balls, the rumble of artillery, the cries of angry men, and that war’s manifold, unceasing rude alarms, placing his faith in the Captain of Salvation, who along with the rattlesnake has given life to the sweetest of songbirds. And when, at last, he arrived into that valley – so pleasant in its sun-dappled majesty that it might just as easily have gone by the name of Glasson County – all at once did he climb from his steed, that spent but still valiant Rider In The Rain. And he pushed the gate of the cemetery open before him, and immediately fell down upon his knees under the leaves of a swaying willow in that windswept Garden of Stone, observed in silence by the very few who remembered him. And who, in their innocence, assumed that with his head bowed and the slouch hat dipped down low over his face, that what he was in the course of doing was bidding goodbye to all his old friends, engaging in sweet, protracted converse with the departed. When, in fact, what that exhausted horseman was doing was ridding himself, in that moment, of each and every illusion that he’d carried with him all the way through his forty-two years upon this earth. In order to become entirely bankrupt, whenever, at last, his time would come. And at which point, my little compadres, he would possess the comfort of owning nothing only his wound.
I remember him placing his hand on Jody’s shoulder but thinking nothing much of it at the time.
–I’m sorry, boys, he told us, swallowing hard, all I can say is that, through the smoke of battle we do the best we can, but with the hound of our weakness always at our heels, awaking in the night with that rain of regret still moist upon our cheeks. I’m sorry, boys, that you ever had to know me – for the truth is, from the very first day I ever drew breath, I been branded with the mark of Cain.
Sometimes we’d see him cresting the rim of the meadow, complete with slouch hat and brass-buttoned military tunic.
Another day we went visiting him in his camp up in the lower field, and right out of nowhere he came swinging down in front of us from behind a tree, starting into this whooping dervish dance as he spun two silver Colts he’d bought in Granard.
–I hitchhiked in specially to get them for my deppities, we heard him hollering, whirling his hat, looking me right in the eye and launched into this slow-as-molasses John Wayne-style drawl, hooking his thumb in the buckle of his belt, narrowly squinting as he spat:
–They lie in Boot Hills all through the west – the outlaws, the killers, the Billy the Kids and worse. Say like the feller that shot Bill Hickock in the back, there’s always one like that in every time of history – but every so often there may have lived in one them … a man!
Rebel-yelling and way-haying as he stamped down the dirt and, before we knew it, was taking up refuge once more behind the tree, making expansive wild gestures as he whooped and hollered:
–He lay face-down in the desert sand, clutching his six-gun in his hand.
–Ringo, nodded Jody, brushing away a cloud of smoke, well I’ll be damned. So whaddya think about that, Ringo Wade?
And that was the first time I heard my nickname.
–Youse’un a good feller, Trooper Wade, Johnny Redlegs grinned.
As off he went yuk-yukking with his whiskey, honking hysterically on his dented brass novelty bugle.
It can still make me nauseous, even thinking about his name, never mind actually uttering it.
But all the same I got to stick to Jody’s advice and focus on the good things, ‘as best you can’, like he always says.
Such as, for example, that very first day we arrived up in Kentuckyland, roaring along the driveway, in Mr Monroe’s fintailed white convertible.
And where – to our complete amazement, so accustomed had we become to the opposite – we found ourselves being treated like princes.
Jody in particular, of course, on account of his unrivalled boxing prowess, a skill which already was the talk of the countryside.
With WW making no secret of his plans for the future as he treated us both to a grand tour of the hog mansion with its medieval blown-glass windows, cement pond and guitar-shaped wrought-iron metalwork on its gates, high upon a hill overlooking the racetrack and breeding farm along with the magnificent wooded slopes and shallow lakes of Glasson valley. With its boggy fields patchworking the central lowlands of flat rolling brown plains of peat bogs and wild areas of spiky rushes, reed swamps, turloughs and conifer forests.
–What I intend to do, boys, he told us almost matter-of-factly, is see to it that in less than two years’ time, or three at the most, what you are gonna find here among these green fields is the most admirable concentration of quality thoroughbred horseflesh in the world at the Kentuckyland yearly sale. Just as soon as those daffodils and snowdrops come into bloom, Monroeville will become the gathering place of oil sheiks, princes, business tycoons, Japanese industrialists and simple millionaires. Because if WW has his way, Kentuckyland is gonna be the biggest crapshoot in Europe. So bide your time and watch them, my dandy young fellers, those sleazy kingpins who now run the sport of kings, exult in their making WW prosper.
As he turned to us and tipped back his powder-blue Stetson, clutching those lapels as he stomped out the remains of a still-glowing cheroot, radiating untold excitement and pride as he continued robustly:
–Yes, you two young men, what you are gazing upon is the property that marks the true beginning of what they will call in time William Walter Monroe’s empire, his country kingdom. But let none of this fool you, fellers, because the truth is that ol’ WW, at heart he’s a good old boy just the same as them whose wages he pays. Yep, the very exact same as anyone, whether it’s Sonny or Red or Big Barney, Wee Hughie or anyone else. And which is why I took ’em in and gave ’em all a helping hand when things fell apart at Glasson County Meats. Because the fact is I know my kin, fellers – and that’s why, even though a cloud o’ suspicion hung over ’em regarding a certain little unfortunate incident that took place a long time back, I decided to give ’em the benefit of the doubt, and maybe that’s why they feel they owe so much to Heartland. But, hell, them good old boys they assisted me in building it up – with Tony as my right-hand man, Hughie doing the bookings and that old jive-jumper Red rock-solid behind the bar, and with nobody likely to give Big Barney lip, and who, along with Sonny, is just about the best goddamn chucker-outer in the whole of Glasson County. Them’s good old boys, and no matter what rumours might have attached to them, I am in no way regretful that whenever they were laid off, at the time I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Because, when push comes to shove, no matter what degree of good fortune I may have had, at the end of the day I look at them and they look at me, and we see ourselves. Yep, we gaze in that old mirror, boys, and what do we see: a good old boy. And who is he when he’s at home, do you ask? Well he’s a feller who might be a little too fond, in his way, of sometime feudin’ and a little sup of moonshine, but give him a chance and he’ll show you how to do things with his hands that a lot of men can’t. Because he’s got what is known as a ‘little bit of wit, a little bit of grit, and a goddamn whole lot of motherfucking shit’. Sure, that good old boy he’s funny and he’s a trickster and he’ll get his hand in your pocket faster than his grandaddy, the three-card trickman. He’ll beat you at horse, nine-ball or poker. He’s got the best hunting dogs in the region and knows where to get the best moonshine in all of the midlands, yeah, and up North too. He’s been around the world once and to two agricultural shows. Some of these fellers, as is well known, don’t survive. But the ones who do, you can find ’em grafting at the plumbers and the electricians, or maybe under a wreck at the bodyshop. He might work at the sawmill or learn to be a long-haul trucker and you can bet your bottom dollar that, at least until now, he ain’t never gonna be found in one of them hog mansions that his wife in her dreams is always hustling for – preferring to remain stuck back among a copse of pine, close maybe to where he was born, and never far from his very own fishing hole. Now come on, boys, for you and me, we got ourselves a whole bunch o’ hosses here as needs tendin’!
He had driven us down to Heartland after that, describing how it had come to him in a dream – the ballroom first, then the attached hacienda-style roadhouse, where the three of us found ourselves standing now.
As he swept his arm up towards the gleaming chandelier.
–All the way from Italy that came, fellers, he told us, and as you can imagine we didn’t have too many o’ them in that two-roomed cottage not three-quarters of a mile from here, that was where I first saw the light of day, fellers, and one thing for sure is – WW he ain’t never forgot it. Just who he is and where it is he comes from, here among these hill-folk as has been randomly shoved by God in these fields and hollers, to hunt and to fish and to love their mamas each and every one. No, WW Monroe he ain’t about to forget where he come from, not now, not never, Jody Boy Kane and Raymond, you misbegotten little hombres for whom old WW is gonna do a turn and a good one. And the reason for that is, maybe even more than most, that us good ol’ boys, we got our pride. And that’s why I want you, this second, to come right over here and join me by this window and keep me company while we survey my coming kingdom. For this is only the beginning of it, fellers, because after Kentuckyland there is gonna be Heartland and, hopefully, and in double-quick succession, palaces of an even mightier splendour – Roseland, Dreamland, you name it fellers. I am gonna transform this here county. So go on, take a look! Run your eyes over the coming extraordinary future …
