Ken Bruen - Headstone

I croaked,

“I have a choice?”

Received a sharp vicious jab to my kidneys, with a bat. . a baseball bat? It hurt like bejaysus. Heard, soon as I got my wind back.

“We’re being nice here Jack but we can do hardball too. Are we clear?”

I managed,

“Crystal.”

“So, would you like to hear our addendum?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Okeydokey, after the rigmarole of give us your scum and such, we’ve added

………………………………….and we’ll annihilate them.”

Sweat coursed down my body. He continued,

“Misfits,

retards,

gays,

the parasites,

oh, yes, I nearly forgot, especially for you Jack,

alkies.

We shall cleanse the planet of them. Recognize anyone familiar in there, Jacky boy?”

Total silence reigned for a few blessed minutes, then his voice in an almost jolly tone said,

“But Jack, hermano, buddy, you’re sweating like a bloody pig.”

Maybe the worst thing of all, in this horror show, he touched my cheek with two fingers, almost caressingly, said,

“Chill big guy, we’re not ready to take you off the board. .”

A single beat, then,

“Yet.”

Chills and sweats were running down my back, my hair was literally saturated from panic. It was about to get worse, a whole lot.

He said,

“We have a rather fascinating dilemma for you. You get a choice, not unlike The Dice Man or Sophie’s Choice . I mention books to help you de-stress.”

Guess what? It wasn’t helping.

He asked,

“I need to know first, though, which hand do you drink with?”

Without thinking, I said,

“The one that shakes the least.”

Received a second stunning blow to my gut that was so fierce I threw up-threw up the water and some other stuff I don’t think I want to know. I stuttered,

“My….right………right hand.”

“Just one more question buddy and we’re nearly done. Would you prefer to read or drink?”

The fuck was this lunatic going? I said,

“To read.”

I think that’s true.

He said,

“Good choice. Blinding you would be a trifle messy so just bear with us a minute.”

My right hand, manacled, was gripped, pinned down, my fingers forcibly spread. I heard,

“Stanley knife, please.”

The sound of one hand clapping.

I came to in a hospital bed. For some bizarre reason, an old proverb in my befuddled mind,

“Only dead fish swim with the stream.”

Shaking this off, I tried to get a handle on where I was. Then the previous events came slithering back and my whole body went into a mini spasm. I tried to sit up. Stewart was perched in an armchair, moved fast, said,

“Best to lie still, buddy.”

Buddy?

He ever call me that before?

Fuck, meant I was in serious bad shape. I took some deep breaths, trying to fend off the tidal wave of panic about to engulf me.

I asked,

“Could I have some water?”

He gently put some ice cubes in my mouth and nirvana, they tasted so fine. I lay back, refusing to look at my right hand. Between the glorious coldness of the ice, I asked,

“How’d I get here?”

He moved back to his chair, never taking his eyes off me, said,

“They had your mobile phone, found my number, said-”

He hesitated.

I pushed,

“Spit it out, Stewart.”

He swallowed.

Maybe he could use an ice cube?

Said,

“They said, we’ve left the garbage outside your door.”

I suppose they could have recycled me.

He continued,

“Ridge has been staying with me. You’ve been missing for nearly a week.”

I asked,

“How are Chelsea doing?”

He looked so ill at ease, no Zen gig helping, it seemed, so I cut to the chase, asked,

“How bad?”

I didn’t mean my football team.

He inhaled deeply, then,

“They took two fingers from your right hand. They’d, ah, cauterized the. . remains, otherwise you’d have bled to death.”

A chill ran down my spine but I had to know, asked,

“Did they leave the digits, the severed ones?”

Oh, Christ, the freaking desperate hope that they did and that the surgeons did their magic and reattached them. Stewart looked stricken. I said,

“I guess that’s a no.”

It was.

He said,

“Ridge is working round the clock, trying to find a lead.”

My mind, maybe in an effort to save whatever tattered remnants remained, muttered,

“The moving finger, having writ, moves on.”

I nearly laughed.

Hysteria?

You bet your arse.

I asked,

“How is Malachy?”

He shook his head, said,

“No change.”

Then he did a thing that broke every rule Stewart held close. He moved over, had a lighted cigarette in his hand, said,

“You’ll be wanting some of this I’m thinking.”

I’ve always had some incomprehensible bond to him but, I swear by all that’s holy, I fucking loved the guy right then. He said,

“The nurses will massacre me.”

I nearly smiled, said,

“Jesus, they’d need to be quick.”

The cigarette done, he took it, extinguished it, put it in his jacket.

Opened a window to let the smoke evaporate. Either that or he was going to jump. He waved his arms futilely, said,

“You caused quite a stir, Jack. The Guards were here. Even Clancy showed up.”

Venom washed over me, I said,

“No doubt he wept.”

Then I zoned, it was to be like that, into and out of consciousness, lucid one moment, stark raving mad the next. I heard, as if from a great distance, a poem by Márín De Brun, based on Dalton Trumbo’s book, Johnny Got His Gun . The lines uncoiling in my head like a soured mantra:

Sightless, soundless

Your day’s begun

Tearless, wordless, no songs be sung

Your hand in ruins

Your head in hell.

Snapped back to hear Stewart say,

“Clancy said it was self-mutilation, your self-loathing reached boiling point.”

I said,

“It’s a theory.”

Maybe the nicotine, maybe Clancy, but I finally looked at my heavily bandaged hand, asked,

“How long before I get out of here?”

He told me the truth, said,

“Few days but, Jack, get some rest, OK?”

I thought,

“Rest in peace.”

Before he started on the bullshit of:

They can do great things these days.

Lots of artificial appendages.

Etc.

I told him,

“They had me spread-eagled on a slab of granite, said it was a headstone.”

I could see the dots connecting in his head, I said,

“Stewart, be real careful, you hear me?”

Rare to rarest did Stewart allow his real feelings to surface. Zen kept the six years of prison under wraps and, too, the death of his beloved sister. He utilized that deathly calm to block out the torrents of simmering lethal rage. Kept a mask of amused detachment to keep the world behind philosophical glass.

Not now.

Fury wrapped his face. His eyes were slits of sheer menace. He said,

“I hope to fuck they have a run at me.”

The nurse came, did that fluffing of pillows they do, then gave me a shot, hurt like a bastard. Stewart said,

“I’ll be back later, Jack. Here’s your mobile, it was in your jacket.”

I was slipping back into sleep, said to Stewart,

“They answered the phone to Laura, said enough to send her fleeing back to London.”

He looked truly sorry, said,

“Ah, no, that’s just the bloody pits.”

Which is one way of seeing it, I suppose.

I might have phrased it a little more heatedly.

I kept hoping, praying, that somehow, in some wild flight of a miracle, Laura would write to me, and I could then try, try to explain to her what happened.