Heartland, page 18
–Looking at what? queried Barney Grue.
–The old Christmas card. With that lovely log fire burning away and the snowflakes falling ever so slowly through the pines.
As the phone rang piercingly and the barman picked it up.
–It’s Tony, he called out, he says he’ll be here in less than five minutes …
Chapter 21
The Tackle Harvest
Deep in the bowels of that acrid, suffocating dungeon, Mr Bonny released a doleful sigh, standing in the match-flame glare of the moon, smiling at Jody.
–You know what their problem is, don’t you, little dogie? You know what their enduring difficulty is and – being of the upcountry breed like yourself – always has been?
He knitted his brows and moved in real close.
–Tell me that you know, that you are aware of their dogged and persistent inadequacies. If you please, relate to me what it is you might know of this conundrum, Mr Kane, he repeated.
–I will, if you tell me just who it is that you are. And that, once and for all, you agree to stop playing games. Who the hell are you, Mr Bonny?
But his visitor refused to say anything – in fact, made a point of ignoring the question completely.
Before coolly examining his nails and proceeding once more into the shadows, whispering softly from behind the humming propane tank.
–Those sad little fellows, them good old boys. Are you telling me you don’t know what it is that their all-pervasive difficulty might be?
Jody Kane shook his head.
–Very well then, replied his visitor, in that case Mr Bonny will take the liberty of telling you.
As he whispered ever so softly, smiling across at Jody.
–Ah yes, he elaborated, their unfortunate predicament is that ever since birth, they have it within them, in their nature, to be wilfully disputatious. Much too in thrall to the emotions, with their poor caged souls ever-straining to fight free, seeking solace in either sweetness or wildness, getting drunk and cutting loose on the world. Prone to taking offence at what are often slurs of an entirely fictitious nature. Yes, I would have to insist, Jody, that they are only too ready to commit themselves to violence, generally over some imagined grievance. Such a waste of valuable energy, I have always thought, and the curse of heartlands everywhere. Do you know what I am going to tell you, my little dogie? That those unfortunate fellows – that they would dispute the ramblings of two flies wandering up a wall. Unhappy men? Primitive? Maybe. Everything that civility deplores, that’s for certain. But at the same time I got to acknowledge they got within them their own style and grace, if that may be a little loosely defined. Mainly in the way the air that they breathe stores power under the hot sun of August and is liable to explode at any time in a thunderstorm, in a violent outburst of emotion. One that is far removed from the church-steepled civility of the village, and which can make them seem ferocious and unsociable at times. Craving, as they do, above all, the wilder, freer side of life. Which they most of all find in the squeal of rubber and crunch of metal on the stock-car circuit. The cockfight, the bloodstock races, the football games. All them things they get to argue about. And what else? Ah yes, their relationships with the sweethearts – do you think that they might, in the wind-up, be afraid of women? Perhaps they are, perhaps not. But one thing you can be sure of – that them good old boys out there, they sure do love their mommas, don’t they?
–I don’t know, but I do know this, choked Jody, shaking like a leaf, tough as I might have been in the past, I know what that sumbitch Begley is capable of. I know just exactly what he can do. You don’t know what he’s like, Mr Bonny …
This appeared to amuse his visitor no end.
–I don’t know what he’s like? You’re telling me that I don’t know what people like him are like? But, just one second, Jody Kane, ain’t you gone and got me straying off the subject now. Because what we were talking about, if you remember, was the subject of them good old mountain boys out there. And how they love to hunt and fish and pull on the jug and raise Cain whenever they get the chance, whenever the opportunity for whooping comes by.
Mr Bonny smiled and flexed his fingers.
–I mean, even take music. All night they been arguing about that. Hell, they’re even in dispute about someone as sweet and wholesome as Jim Reeves.
–Who’s that? Jody Kane asked. Who’s Jim Reeves?
Then, perhaps the most extraordinary event of all took place.
As Mr Bonny whispered:
–Gentleman Jim …
Before slowly appearing out from behind the gas tank, only now attired not in a suit of ice-cream linen but a neat black bowtie and a scarlet velvet tuxedo jacket. Approaching the single hanging bulb and standing behind it, smiling right at Jody as he began to croon the words in a lush, baritone voice, ever so smoothly, just like the velvet-toned tenor himself, and with the very same blank half-smile, and that waxen complexion which could never grow old.
–Welcome to my world, he continued intimately, built with you in mind …
Now Mr Bonny was facing him again, squatting akimbo on a plastic crate – in white, as before.
–Do you ever dream about your parents, Jody? Your father and mother, do they ever come into your mind?
–I don’t remember them enough to dream. All I ever really see whenever they do come are the faces of his followers around the pit as he gets himself ready to face another opponent in the woods. I was born under canvas, you see, Mr Bonny. Into a tribe that were the outlaw breed. Born fighters, they said, arriving like some ancient tribe of warriors, unannounced, into every village, with their long fur coats and wagons and wooden pipes.
–I see. I understand. But of course you don’t remember them. Because they took you away when you were still little more than an infant, and put you in behind those high forbidding walls.
–Please don’t bring that up. I don’t want to talk about that infernal place …
And, just for the briefest of moments, Mr Bonny began to fade – but didn’t, in the process, become a velvet-voice crooner in a red velvet jacket with black bowtie, or anything else.
Because right now he was sporting a butternut military tunic, complete with a row of brass buttons along either side.
As he winked and lifted the dented brass bugle.
–Ta ra! This is to announce that I am here on behalf of the Southland for the purpose of bringing contentment and happiness to all who are fortunate enough to encounter me. And why, on my trumpet, I’ma going to play for you now the anthem of the forever dispossessed, those for whom the Cause is always lost. And why they live their lives in a world that is close to dream, where somewhere faraway the hounds they always seem to be baying in the morning, while nearby the doves they have already commenced their mourning. In this hallowed place of hot earth and pinewood, where the imagination holds forth unchecked. Enabling us, in its own special way, that cosmic conspiracy against romance, throughout so many centuries, to endure. But, before I perform my little tune for you. I got to sing a paean to that other special wonder of the Southland – and it is to her those rawboned good old boys must pay their constant and abject homage – those who profess to live by feud and moonshine and the ancient code of the hills, but before whom they will happily abase themselves as they lift their cup and howl to the moon: O woman, lovely woman of the Southland, as pure and chaste as sparkling water, as cold as the gleaming ice, we lift this cup and we pledge our hearts and our lives to the protection of your virtue and chastity …
As he raised his instrument and parped it a few times before Johnny Redlegs – for it was he – produced a gleaming shears and began to set assiduously about his person, right there in the fork of his britches.
Until his lap had become saturated with blood.
–Tarnation, he erupted, if I ain’t gone and harvested m’godforsaken tackle all over again … what a to-do … !
As he flicked some warm wet blots at Jody’s face, and then, in a whirlwind of raucous, hysterical laughter, was gone.
Chapter 22
The Glasson County Electrisms
Looking back on it all now, I often think that maybe it’s just as well. That, drunk though I might have been during the course of composing my numerous replies to Jody – and, believe you me, they were indeed many – it’s salutary, perhaps, that I never did actually get around to disclosing the whole truth about Johnny Redlegs and what I’d seen during our time in Whiterock.
Especially that night when he arrived into the darkness of the dormitory, and it’s not all that surprising that I mightn’t choose to speak of it, considering the negative effect it also had on me.
Having preyed on my mind, on and off over the years, affecting me very badly.
To tell the truth, I’m not entirely sure he’d have got it, or understood what I was trying to say.
Because not many do – with that being the reason that I ended up sustaining what they call, in the organisation, a ‘minor setback’.
As a matter of fact, whenever I happened to mention it to the doctor, he didn’t register anything approaching shock, and in fact as soon as he’d chatted to me about what it was I had to do, went on to talk about something else entirely.
As if it hadn’t been anything at all unusual, just something any doctor has to deal with on a daily basis, particularly someone as specialised as him.
And who, in the course of his career, has pretty much seen everything – fellows coming in weeping and crying like children, with all sorts of stories about seeing things and encountering figures from their past and all the rest of it.
Just a standard relapse by people who have reached rock bottom in their time. Folk, in other words, just the very same as myself.
Except that, I am happy and grateful to be able to report, that particular situation is now, happily, in the past – bearing no comparison at all to my present circumstances.
Thanks, I am glad to be able to say, to a couple of very significant people – certain individuals, as I say, who just happen to have bothered to have faith in me, when it mattered.
Something which, once upon a time, I genuinely wouldn’t have considered possible.
I didn’t even think that I’d ever get to sleep again.
It used to be like having these tiny fragments of glass moving around just a millimetre under your skin, only all the time.
But then there were the more spectacular episodes, which, now that they’re all history, I see no point in going into now.
To be honest, they’re pretty much too unappealing – if not, at times, terrifying even.
The ‘head-scalds’, as Sonny Hackett called them.
Sonny Hackett, who, somewhere in the recesses of my mind was moving like a shadow across the floor of the bar, as my heart continued accelerating, erratically, under the roof among the rafters.
–I can definitely see something moving out there, I heard him announce, and I swear to God, I think it might be you-know-who!
As the door swung open and we saw the twins holding one another up – in their hoodies – looking like death.
–We were going to go in for a swim, gasped Shorty, but our boy started raving and pointing at things. He says he saw Colonel Sanders on the water.
–I know what I saw, his brother stammered, I know what I saw and I’m not going to fucking lie. He was standing there pointing – and he was laughing!
–I told you before and I won’t tell you again: shut the fuck up with saying the like of that! You’re only making a fool of yourself!
–Colonel fucking Sanders, snorted Sonny Hackett, just when you think you’ve heard it all.
–It’s finger-lickin’ good, said Red, deriving very little amusement from the effort.
–This has been the worst mistake of my life, wept Shorty.
–I could see him clearly – just standing there, in shadow. I know what I saw.
Then the phone rang, and the barman lifted up the receiver.
–It’s TB, he nodded, definitely this time. Five minutes, he says – this time for definite.
Then Hughie Munley announced that he thought he might tell a joke.
As a soft gentle tapping was heard at the door.
–It isn’t five minutes yet, said Sonny, as the door swung slowly open.
Tootsy Corrigan would have been past her forties, blowsy and big-bosomed.
She sometimes did secretarial work for Tony Begley, and drove for him.
–Hi, she said, giving them all a little wave.
She was wearing a shiny blue-and-white Glasson football jersey, stretched tight across her front.
–Hi, she said again.
–Hi, said Red.
–Hi, said Sonny.
The twins said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
Big Barney couldn’t take his eyes off her nipples, prominent underneath the acrylic material.
–I’m sorry I’m late, she apologised, jangling a bunch of keys.
For no reason he could identify, Hughie Munley kept on slapping the table.
–Hi there Tootsy! Hi hi hi! he shrieked, beginning to chatter trip-hammer fast, with beads of sweat lining up on his crown.
–Glasson County has a great fucking team this year, so they have – and I don’t care what anyone says! he squealed.
Tootsy smiled but didn’t respond.
Then she said softly:
–Mr Begley says he’ll be here very shortly. I’m sorry to have to say he was unavoidably detained.
The eyes of Big Barney were still fixed on her front.
Electrisms, he kept on thinking.
–Up Glasson! shouted Big Barney Grue again. Yes, for sure! Hip hip hooray! They’ll win the cup, without a doubt!
–There’s nothing wrong with women wearing football shirts, they heard Hughie Munley assert, nothing Miss Corrigan! No, not a thing.
But when they looked again, she was gone.
Chapter 23
A Life, Shredded
I really am glad that, after having put it off for so long, that at last I’ve finally taken the time and done my best to set down my story – for it really and truly has benefited me a lot.
And I can understand clearly, just by examining the sequence of events, how hasty and intemperate I’ve sometimes been, and how poor my judgment, at times, could be.
Among those errors being what happened that night when, yet again, I had stumbled home, full of vodka, from the pub, and started into writing yet another ill-considered missive.
But if you reckon that one was bad, then you ought to have seen what I came up with next time – when I got back after burying a bottle of whiskey, roasted beyond belief. Even by my standards in those days, knocking over furniture and hauling out all the letters he had sent me up to then. And tearing the whole lot of them, without exception, into pieces.
Laughing like a crazy man as I was doing it.
–So long then, Jody Kane. Vaya con dios, my one-time motherfucking friend. Estar viendo que en el otro lado de la luna! So what if you’re happy to have been so fortunate as to get yourself a lovely partner and a beautiful place to live – you think I care about Sweetwater, Georgia? Because if you do, that is where you are wrong, my one-time friend. For, as far as I’m concerned, you and I never knew each other. As a matter of fact, I’m finding it difficult to remember your name. So long then, compadre, whoever the fuck you are – for all I can say is that you’re no fucking friend of mine!
Only to find myself the following morning, waking to a blaze of sunlight hammering on the shutter, lathered in an icy-cold sweat, consumed by self-loathing as I pulled on my clothes and made my way out as fast as I could.
Where else, but to the counter of some anonymous bar, don’t ask me where, taking the torn-up pieces of one of his letters from an envelope and doing my best to put them back together.
It’s obvious that I shouldn’t have ever sent him what I’d written, because I never did get to hear from him after that. So, drunk or sober, now I had nobody.
Angie having finished with me months before.
–I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ray, she’d said, because I know now for sure it doesn’t include me. Maybe she can give it to you, the girl of your dreams that you know I’m talking about.
And I didn’t much care where I ended up after that – drifting aimlessly from one job to another, all of them dead-ends.
Until, eventually, I pretty much became what you could only describe as a vagrant wino.
Which is a career choice, believe me, not recommended in Ireland – certainly not these days, with all the changes there’ve been, most especially in little places that once would have been described as backwoods or out-of-the-way.
Not anymore, I can assure you, with five-lane blacktops cutting through the countryside and great big eighteen-wheelers burning rubber from dawn to dusk.
I don’t know how many times I came close to getting killed, stumbling in a half-daze along the hard shoulder, bleary-eyed, clutching yet another can of Superstrength.
I’ll never forget the night I went back to the site of what, once upon a time, used to be Mervyn’s Mountain Bar, lodged between two hills backing onto Lake Wynter. All of which is completely overgrown now, with no hint or trace of what it used to be.
What I was doing there, I haven’t the faintest idea – I was drunk, of course.
It must have been nine or ten o’clock at night, for Christ’s sake, black as molasses in the midwinter dark, you couldn’t so much as see your hand in front of you.
How long I lay there before I heard it I couldn’t rightly say.
–Kuklok!
But I do know this – that it was a sound which shot right down into the very core of my soul.
I think I might have screamed. I can’t be sure.
But if I did, I would never have been heard, with it being the kind of cry that made no sound.
Like you’d make in a cockloft after the departure of a certain Tootsy Corrigan.
And it was just at that point that I heard the same sound again.
