Heartland, page 14
As the percussionist from Kit & Cahoots commenced a furiously incessant, almost epileptic beat, with Bronco Meers coming running along the ramp to the sound of frantic applause and uproarious cheers, as every soul was released and granted latitude to run wild and raw.
–Kill kill kill, was all Jody Kane could hear as his opponent went straight for him, head down like a Brahma bull.
They had given Bronco Meers a name – the Cobra.
Yeah, the Cincinnati Cobra was the handle they had given him.
Even though he wasn’t ever in Ohio, or Cincinnati.
Had never, in fact, been to America in his life.
Hailing from Mullingar, Co. Westmeath.
It was just on account of that famous look that he got in his eye, whenever, just like the snake, he had decided to go in for the kill.
Regarding his hapless opponent unswervingly.
Fixing him with a lethal, prideful stare.
The Cobra was hungrier than ever now, and was figuring on showing Jody Kane a thing or two.
–What’s goin’ on? Jody Kane provoked him, swinging and all the time dancing around.
–It ain’t what’s goin’ on, smoke-and-horses, it’s what’ll soon be coming off – your face.
Leading with a double combination to the solar plexus then one two three four five to the side of the head.
And after which Jody had bled, real bad.
But had somehow recovered, and coming towards the end of the fourth or fifth round, had effected it.
That is to say, the pile-driver punch for which he was justly famous.
As the Cobra went down.
But it still wasn’t over, with the Mullingar stalwart rallying – with it soon becoming apparent that the fight was definitely going to go the full distance.
As out came the Cobra.
You could tell by his expression that Jody’s trainer was worried bad, for this had never happened before, not to someone like the Bull Calf Kane.
Not to Jody.
Not to the reigning champion.
With more furious combinations and one two three four five above the kidneys.
You could physically feel the pain.
But then the Cobra did a bad – and, as it turned out – an extremely unwise thing.
Kneeing Jody, slyly, in the groin.
And whispering:
–Daisyboy.
Because it was after that that the reigning champion saw in front of him …
Yes, it was after that that the sneering, slavering visage of none other than Johnny Redlegs, rose up out of nowhere right in front of Jody Kane.
His abuser!
Filled with fake remorse and contrition
–Shucks, he heard Johnny Redlegs bleat pathetically, for all of the bad things I done in the long ago. Please forgive me and say that it’s all right – will you, little feller? How can you ever forgive me, my own sweet lonesome little dogie?
After that, Jody struck the Cobra – hit him hard.
Once.
Twice.
And then again.
–Come on then, smoke-and-horses, is that the best you think you can do? Is that the best you got to offer – or is it, maybe, that you’re afraid?
Jody Kane would just as readily have walked away there and then, but the Cobra just couldn’t seem to learn.
No, he still kept coming.
–I’ll fix you, you low-born gypsy no-good, that spent his life under canvas along with rats. I’ll beat you, pikey, to a living pulp, I swear …
And that was when Jody did it – completely and utterly lost it, really.
First giving him a little jolt under the chin, just a little tap with his fist, as the Cobra grunted.
But his face went white as he tapped him again. Around the heart, down in the kidneys, and up on the wishbone. He held him up with one hand and fed him those little jolts with the other.
With the Cobra’s face seeming to turn from white to green and his tongue slid out from his teeth.
And it was at that point Jody went for it.
Repeating to himself like someone possessed:
–Trooper Johnny, who is he? Trooper Johnny, who is he?
With his fists then flying out in front of him – one two three four five and then after that, the same again.
Before landing a special bulldozing right into the centre of his face.
As the Cobra howled and fell in a heap.
With the referee beginning to count him out.
But he never got there, for something was wrong. Because his trainer had already climbed in through the ropes.
–I feel so guilty, Ray, I remember him saying many times after that, I’ll sometimes just be closing my eyes and then he’ll be there, getting ready to come out of his corner and …
–You’re a thoroughbred, Kane, that’s what you are, WW had reassured him, just like your father before you was. And don’t you ever disappoint me by doubting it.
Maybe I alone knew just how vulnerable he was, and how much he personally had changed.
–I’d do anything to quit, he had said one day, just get away and travel the world.
–So would I, I’d nodded eagerly, to realise the dreams that kept us going in our imaginations. Eden’s uplands, back in Whiterock.
–Amigo, he said, and I said:
–Compadre.
So we’d been turning the possibility of departure over in our minds for a long while – long before the Monroe tragedy. All that did was bring it to a head.
It breaks my heart when I think how I fucked it over.
It really and truly does.
I hope you believe me.
Sometimes whenever I find myself writing, if that’s what you want to call it – more like delving deep into the well of what, I suppose, is your soul – I’ll often just let myself scribble away, thinking about nothing only getting the words down on paper.
Especially whenever I’m listening to music.
Although I really don’t really know why that might be.
Maybe because all I really own in this world is a stack of second-hand records, or LPs as they used to be called.
Just now I was playing ‘Crazy’ by Patsy Cline, which was recently named the number-one jukebox hit of all time.
–Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely …
I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it, with the tears just erupting out of nowhere, of their own volition flowing down my face.
There are times when I can find myself so overwhelmed – particularly when I’m listening to tunes of that quality – that it’s all I can do not to fling down my pen and go off to the pub or the off-licence and just get myself a bottle of – I don’t know, something.
Just to bring myself down, you know? With the ferocity of the images sometimes coming so thick and fast that, at times, on occasion, it can actually be frightening.
I mean, I swear to God, there were times when I thought I could actually hear them.
The heartbeats below me in Mervyn’s Bar, I mean,
–We don’t know for sure he killed himself! cried Wee Hughie, on the verge of hysteria. Because when all is said and done, we’ve got no proof.
His face was raw and red as he poked the wooden surface of the table with his finger and kept obsessively tugging at his sleeve.
–We can’t say any of that with any certainty, he suggested shakily, and anyway Mr Monroe, he wasn’t that kind of man.
–Like it or not, he did it all right, died by his own hand, said Red morosely, so don’t go making things worse now, you hearing me, Hughie?
–Yeah. Strike it, Patches, warned Sonny Hackett, you got nothing important to say, strike your scrake. The boss is dead – he’s a goner, done deal.
–I object to that, snapped Hughie, I resent those words, you calling me Patches. Would you like to know something? I think you are a very ignorant man, Sonny Hackett. No wonder they’re always saying you’re moody. They say you’re a moody bastard so they do. That they can’t depend on you – that you never know what sort of humour you’re going to be in.
That made Sonny laugh, he said.
And Hughie Munley didn’t know what he do, so he looked away.
Mervyn Walker’s eyes seemed to say, It’s going to be OK, fellers. Just relax.
Or maybe I’d imagined that. But it did seem to do Hughie some good. At any rate, you could see his lowering slightly, just a little.
–What’s that grating sound? said Sonny. Is that you at that shit again, Campbell?
Red Campbell said nothing, staring vexedly across at Hackett.
Sonny, in his turn, matching him with a filthy look.
Before looking around at all the others.
–Am I missing something here? he wondered, is he looking at me? Wake up there, Grue – I said, am I mistaken or is Red Campbell giving me the bitter eye?
Big Barney got up in his chair and shook his head.
–No, Sonny. He’s not. You’re imagining that.
Red just stood there and nobody said anything. But then Wee Hughie surprised everyone by shouting out:
–Yes he is. And I wouldn’t blame him, to be honest. For having to listen to people like you, Sonny Hackett, I sometimes I think in this life that we’d be better off at the bottom of Lake Wynter.
Once more, nobody said anything.
Before Sonny Hackett pushed his chair back and responded:
–What was that you were saying there, Patches? Because I didn’t quite hear it.
–I think it’s all stupid, behaving like this when we’re waiting for TB. That’s all I’m saying. And why I just tried to get it back the way that it used to be – except you had to laugh and make fun of me, didn’t you?
–But I thought you were a comedian, Patches. That’s why I was laughing. Because I thought you were being amusing and trying to crack wise.
Sonny nudged Campbell.
–Isn’t that right, Red? Of course it is, amigo.
Then he slowly began to cross the room.
As Red’s eyes followed his path resentfully, watching as Sonny Hackett flicked his forelock back and tapped Hughie Munley, playfully, on the shoulder.
–It’s all right, Hughie, they heard him say, you can tell us about the old times. You go right ahead. You can tell us now. It’s gonna be all right.
Hughie choked up, just a little, reaching for his hankie to give his moist dome a wipe.
–Whenever I think, he commenced in quavering tones, whenever I think, Sonny, about WW and the effect he had on the whole county – and how, somehow, way back then, we all used to be the closest of friends – and how we looked out for one another, it makes me feel kind of regretful and sad. Whenever I think of how we all used to go down to his place every night, just to drink ourselves stupid or dance, like now, to the record machine. Because we sure did have ourselves some good times – I think because he taught us, in some way, that we could. To kind of believe in ourselves, or something. Because WW, he thought big. Do you remember the day we transformed the whole of Heartland into the United States of America?
–Yeah! grinned Sonny. I sure do, Hughie. Heartland, America. USA!
–I remember it too, chimed Big Barney, leaning across the side of his chair, we did it to celebrate the Fourth of July.
–WW, he sure did have him some ideas, nodded Sonny, that you sure can say about William Walter Monroe.
–It was one of his best ideas ever, stammered Hughie, with everyone having to act as a different state!
–I was Michigan, Big Barney cried.
–And me, called Red, call me Campbell, Nebraska, haw.
–All o’ them states, remembered Hughie, fantastic.
Then Mervyn called over, from the far side of the counter:
–He gave me a message – sent me all the way to Dublin, so he did. Where he’d had the American flag specially made. The stars and stripes – he dispatched me to get it.
–And man, shrieked Wee Hughie, did that old banner look good on the ballroom ceiling. Hooray for William Walter. But I hate it all now, now that he’s dead. Because people like him, they’re not supposed to ever leave the world … not folks like WW Monroe, no sir.
With them all turning around then, scarcely able to believe their eyes, as that old Mervyn Walker, what did he do only climb right up there on the counter of the bar and deliver, to their astonishment, a note-perfect impression of the greatest man who’d ever lived in Glasson County – the one and only William Walter Monroe himself.
Closing his eyes tightly and lifting up those two long slender arms exactly the same as WW had done on the occasion of that fabulous Fourth of July celebration.
There had never, ever, been a night to compare with it – which the barman, quite magnificently, was giving them the opportunity to remember now.
When, to yet another tumultuous roll of drums, WW had eventually appeared onstage, whirling his Stetson as he called out to three thousand people:
–That mongrel breed, that’s what they used to call us, friends. The ferocious backsettler, lawless and unsociable. Who live in sloth and know little of beauty. But that’s where they’re wrong, because from this day forward we live whatever way we want to, by our own backcountry codes …
Then Mervyn, at last, gave an extravagant bow and left the stage of his own bar counter.
–Ah. Them was days, lamented Wee Hughie, they were the best days ever in Glasson County.
–Before it all went wrong, Red Campbell spat bitterly, exploding dramatically and crying out, hoarsely:
–It was Wade, from the start, who set the whole thing up. I sometimes wonder if that poor gypsy bastard Jody Kane even knew what he was getting into. But that other unreliable self-serving sumbitch – not one inch of him would I ever have trusted, and now it’s come to this. Pulling a Judas on WW, ripping off all he’d got left, his bonds. The best man this whole backcountry has ever known, and him lying still warm underneath the clay of Glasson Mountain, the place where he was borned and reared.
–And a place he loved, maintained Wee Hughie Munley, more than any other, because he told me that himself.
–It’s that smug sweet-talker by the name of Dawn ‘Kit’ King that’s at the back of it all, mumbled Sonny Hackett with unconcealed malice, it was her more than anyone who turned poor WW’s head. Because he took a heart-burning for her, and there ain’t anyone in Glasson who doesn’t know it, and that’s a fact.
–That might be the case, but I’m still gonna cut that snake and cut him bad whenever I see him.
–You ain’t gonna cut no-one, Campbell. Anyhow you wouldn’t have it in you. We’ll leave all that to a certain Tony Begley. It’s Mr Begley’ll do any cutting. For we want no repeats of what happened with Wilson Gillis – so we’ll leave it to someone who knows what he’s doing!
–What happened that night was an accident, protested Hughie, you got no right to go bringing all that up again.
–That’s right, cried Barney, awaking sharply from a semi-slumber, why would we want to harm Wilson Gillis?
Then he fell right back into the chair, like all the air had escaped right out of him.
Mervyn Walker was busy searching underneath the counter. It was a fishing rod, he had resolved to tell them, if they ever got around to being sober enough to bother inquire.
Something, considering their advanced state of inebriation, he considered extremely unlikely indeed.
In any case his little parcel didn’t look at all obtrusive, with his having taken the precaution of discreetly wrapping it in jute, binding it with twine in a number of places.
Nudging it with his knee, manoeuvring it securely out of sight.
As he wiped the counter and smiled across benignly at every single person, each in their turn.
By now they had all returned to a game they had already been playing, involving the naming of various American states and towns. Just like they’d done on that night long ago, on the Fourth of July, in the Heartland ballroom, 1976.
–Saginaw, Michigan.
–Kalamazoo.
Then Hughie Munley got up to his feet and shouted ecstatically:
–But, best of all, Paragoul, USA.
With Sonny, even, showing some enthusiasm – laughing his head off, in fact. As he outlined his share of names and then, suddenly, swept a heap of glasses off the table.
–Hey, called the barman, what in the heck?
But, fortunately, none of them broke.
