Кен Бруен - American Skin

“Why?”

“I have a terrible feeling you’re going to need it.”

She was right.

It was Siobhan who’d chosen Tucson and naturally I asked why. First she said,

“That dry heat, every day being warm.”

It may seem to other nationalities that we’re more than a little obsessed with the rain. We are.

If you spend a childhood getting drenched, soaked to the skin, wet to your very core, you’d be happy never to see a drop of it again. When we get, say, five, yeah, count ’em, five days of sunshine for a summer, we’re near orgasmic. We must be one of the few nations who hope global warming is true if it means dry weather. Then she said,

“And you’ll want to see where that gunfight took place.”

Jesus, I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d got the wrong town. Loving someone does mean not correcting them. Shortly before I left, she discovered her error, asked me why I’d said nothing, and I did the one thing she respected most of all, I told the truth, said,

“I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

Her expression, of wonder, awe, then she said,

“So it’s true, there are men who really love women.”

To change the subject I asked,

“Are we going to Tombstone then?”

She shuddered, blessed herself then,

“Good god no... we couldn’t live in a place named after a graveyard.”

The awful irony is that we may as well have chosen it: Graves were going to be the legacy of the whole enterprise in the fallout.

Dade had discovered Tammy Wynette in prison, he’d done more time inside than he liked to remember. As a child, he’d been nourished, cared for, by parents who adored him. He was the exception to the rule that if a child is reared with love and warmth, he’ll be a mature, compassionate adult. But then, Dade was a force of nature, as vicious, cold, and unconcerned as the storms that arise out of nowhere and drown the fishermen travelling on the currachs to the Aran Islands. The islanders are so fatalistic about this eventuality that they never learn to swim.

Meeting Dade, you were in a similiar position, any survival skills you’d attained weren’t going to be much help. He was the Great White shark of urban malaise: random, ferocious, and struck from the depths of unfathomable darkness. His earliest memory was killing a goldfish; a birthday present, he snatched it from the bowl, threw it in the toilet, watched it swim for a bit, then poured bleach in.

The tiny creature writhing in agony exhilarated Dade and he took the plunger, poked the fish till it near disintegrated from the cleanser. His mother, discovering the performance, was horrified and gave him a serious talk. He learned to lie almost instantly, claiming he was trying to... clean the little fishy.

Then he immediately learned another vital skill, weeping. As the tears flowed, he felt nothing, save a buzz from fucking with another person. His father was less gullible and Dade noticed him watching him from then on. Next birthday, he got a puppy, a beautiful collie that his Mom suggested they call Lassie. Dade torched Lassie; it took a time and he got bit twice but felt it was a fair tradeoff for the sheer elation. This time, he was taken to a doctor; alas it was too late to take Lassie anywhere save the trash.

The doctor managed to get under Dade’s skin and for the first time in his professional career, was scared. He’d always taken the view that pure evil belonged to movies like The Omen, to books from Stephen King; he adhered to the theory that nurture and/or chemistry was the root of most psychosis. Dade changed all that.

Ten years old and the vibe emanating from this child sent shivers up the doctor’s spine. What was worse was the kid knew the effect he had, saw the look in the doctor’s eyes and promised,

“You send me away, I’ll get out and find you.”

It was nonsense, a kid threatening a highly qualified physician. But who needed the aggravation? With a bit of luck, the kid would follow his instincts and be locked in a maximum pen for the rest of his life. So he prescribed pills. He did say to the father,

“That child will need watching.”

The father stared at the doctor, asked,

“For three hundred bucks an hour you’re telling me something new?”

The doctor, sensing malpractice, tried,

“He’ll probably grow out if it.”

The father didn’t doubt it, said,

“I’m sure he will grow, but into what, you want to tell me that?”

The doctor didn’t.

The person who benefited from the session was Dade; he learned two things, power and secrecy. The keys to the dark kingdom. As he grew and more animals disappeared from the neighbourhood, he learned to cover his tracks. When he was fifteen, his father, in a last-ditch effort to help his son, took him fishing. Big mistake.

It took Dade nearly ten minutes to drown his Dad but he did prolong it just a tad, for the hell of it and for payback. He’d mastered the art of mimicry and knew how to fake grief, so to all, he appeared inconsolable. His mother knew but she had found her own dark realm, booze, in the shape of vodka martinis. Get a pitcher of those babies ready by noon and you weren’t hurting at all. She hung herself on Dade’s seventeenth birthday, and Dade hit the road. He’d always refer to his upbringing as idyllic, and it was: If you were a psycho and didn’t get caught, where was the down side?

Movies, Dade loved ’em. Peckinpah, Tarantino, Oliver Stone, those guys rocked. Driving through the small towns of the Midwest, he’d check the local movie house and if one of those guys had a movie up, he’d pull in, buy a ticket, a shitload of popcorn, sodas, do a little crystal, get the mood right. Sitting there, he’d be in hog heaven. Times, too, in those little towns, he’d score some chickie, usually worked the soda fountain or waited tables in the diner. He’d give her his hundred-watt smile, lay all those Elvis-type manners on her, and drive her to a place outside town. If they fought back, he liked it that much better. Left them battered, bruised, and as close to dead as it gets. After, as they crouched, huddled in the road, he’d blow a kiss, caution,

“You all be careful out there, there’s bad folk riding our highways.”

Felt he’d aided their growth.

Above all, Dade loved America, you didn’t need to tell him it was God’s own country. Man, he was out there, proving it and if he was nearer to Satan than the Pale Nazarene, well, it was all part of the same cycle. Rock ’n’ roll.

Early on he discovered The Clash... Joe Strummer was the man. For a while he adopted an English accent but got tired of it, it was hard to ask for grits and eggs over easy in Brit prissy tone. Plus, some of the good ol’ boys interpreted it as homosexual, and that was not to be recommended in Bible country.

In Sausalito, Dade came across one of those new age shops. It tickled him that it was spelled Shoppe. He said to the aging hippie who tended the counter,

“Need to learn to spell, buddy.”

There was a host of angels on every side, and U2 was on the soundtrack, with “If Will Send His Angels.” America was in the grip of angelic fever then, Danny DeVito had proclaimed his success due to his guardian angel; the bestseller list was full of titles like, Getting to Know Your Angel.

Dade thought it was full of shit. The hippie stared at him. Dade was wearing a long black duster, his perennial cowboy boots, and a T-shirt with “Never mind the Bollocks...” In his waistband was a SIG, locked and loaded. Dade had his Ray Bans on and the guy couldn’t see his eyes, so he didn’t know what he was dealing with, he asked,

“Do you know the name of your angel?”