Ken Bruen - Green Hell

My birthday.

Fuck

and

Fuck

Again.

I got over thirty cards. Yeah, right!

I dragged my aging body to the shower, avoided the mirror, not a mix. I was growing a beard. At that stage of weary wino, not to mention leery. I had a serious adrenalized coffee and an extra Xanax for the day that was in it.

My head was scrambled for a blitz night of TV.

A highly anticipated return of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes on BBC. Then, mid-Jameson, I switched to Sky Living to catch Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock. After midnight, on cable, I stumbled across. . you guessed it. . Sherlock with Robert Downey Jr. in the role. I fell into bed with Basil Rathbone striding through my dreams uttering,

“I’m the real deal.”

Come morning,

I dressed like a winner.

Sort of.

Old Garda sweatshirt under a weird fish comfortable wool shirt. Black 500s over Dr. Martens. Shucked into my all-weather item 1834, looked out the window, said,

“Bring it on.”

Guilt-free for once to hit Garavan’s at opening time. Sean the barman said,

“Blian Nua go maith.”

Indeed.

Two drinks in, a guy took the stool beside me. I tried for his name,

“Tom?”

He nodded, ordered a large Paddy, no ice. Got my vote.

I knew his backstory. A rough one. His son had been killed by a nineteen-year-old drunk driver. Worse, if possible, the guy walked, on a technicality. Tom then had the horror of running into this pup fairly regularly. Galway is still a village in the worst way.

The punk, far from repentant, would smirk, even once flashing a thumbs-up.

Until. .

Six months before, the punk, drunk, got behind the wheel of his brand-new Audi. Present from Daddy for his twenty-first. A figure in the backseat shoved a single long shaft of steel into the base of his skull, right to the dumb fuck’s brain. Tom had a solid alibi.

He ordered a second drink, offered me one.

My birthday!

So I said,

“Yeah, thank you.”

We clinked glasses, I said,

“You doing OK?”

He held his drink up to the light, as if it might reveal some truth. Then he smiled, said,

“The past six months, I’ve been fucking great.”

Amen.

Sean, a voracious reader, watched Tom leave, then put a book on the counter. It was upside down but I could read the author’s name,

Sara Gran.

Sean freshened my pint, said.

“I read an author during Christmas and you know, the critics crap him off because they say. .”

Pause

“. . Get this. He uses too many cultural references, pop music, crime writers in his books. Now, see, you know what I think of them? I might hazard. . not complimentary?”

Big grin, then,

“Yeah, bollix to them. Because for me, it grounds the story in stuff I know, that I can relate to. One fuck said he was for people who don’t read. How fucking insulting is that to readers?”

The pint was good. I sank a quarter, said,

“Thing is, Sean, critics are God’s excuse for why shite happens.”

Sean was shouted at by a small elderly woman who demanded,

“A big dry sherry.”

As he turned to go, he said,

“Hey, guess whose birthday is today.”

I tried for a humble grin, asked,

“Who?”

“Schumacher.”

Michael Schumacher was in a medically induced coma.

I reflected bitterly that in one form or another, I had been inducing a coma over my whole bedraggled life.

Back at my apartment I found Johnny Duhan had sent me a copy of his album

Winter.

The very first track might have been written by my own heart,

“Charity of Pain.”

I muttered,

“God bless your genius soul, Johnny.”

Marc Roberts and Jimmy Norman, over the past week, had been giving extensive airplay to “The Beacon.”

Serendipity?

I dunno, but later in the week, my favorite band, the Saw Doctors, were due in the Roisin Dubh.

Music, music everywhere and not a hand to hold.

Och, ochon (woe is rife).

“You can run with the big dogs

or sit on the porch and bark.”

(Wallace Arnold)

January 5: Horrendous gales and storms continued to lash the country.

In Salthill, the sea roared over the promenade to submerge the Toft car park.

It was surreal to see the cars floating in more than six feet of water. Homes, hospitals were without power. That evening, I risked a walk to see the damage. Headed for the cathedral. A vague notion that I might light some candles for all my dead. . a long list.

The church was closed. Priests lining up for sales, no doubt. I was about to turn into Nun’s Island when something caught my eye. A figure, outlined against the heavy church door, was kicking something repeatedly.

A desperate penitent?

I have never been troubled with minding my own business. I headed over, realizing it was a guy in his twenties kicking the be-Jaysus out of a tiny pup.

I shouted,

“Hey, shithead, you want to stop doing that.”

He turned, well turned-out in a North Face heavy parka, matching combat pants, and thick Gore-Tex boots. His face was tanned, well nourished. Who the fuck has a tan in Galway in January?

He seemed delighted to see me.

You believe it?

Flashed brilliant white teeth that testified to seriously expensive dentistry. This kid came from money. He reached into his jacket, produced a large knife; it glinted off the heavy brass door handles. He said in that quasi surfer dude accent the youngsters (the stupid ones) have adopted,

“You want a piece of me?”

He actually ran it as wanna. Whatever movie was running in his head, it had a definite x-cert. The pup, whimpering, tried to huddle more into the wall under the holy water font. The poor thing looked like a refugee from Bowie’s album Space Oddity, or maybe more Diamond Dogs .

I said,

“Why don’t you come down here and we’ll see what we can do with the knife?”

He literally leaped the five steps and I sidestepped, putting all of a right fist into his gut. I kicked him in the head as he crumpled. Then I caught him by the scruff of the neck, pulled him back up to the holy water font, pushed his head in it, said,

“Count your blessings.”

I counted to ten, pulled him out, reached in his jacket, found a fat wallet. Took that. I leaned down, gathered up the tiny bundle of terrorized pup, moved him into the warmth of my jacket. The guy was groaning, his eyes coming back into focus, and, swear to God, somehow he managed a malevolent smile, muttered,

“Your ass is grass, dude.”

With the heel of my Dr. Martens, I destroyed that fabulous dental art. I turned to go and, in fair imitation of his accent, said,

“Doggone!”

I called the pup. . what else. .

“Ziggy.”

Over the next few days I spent a small fortune on vet treatment. I’d been feeding him, sparingly, from the finger of a rubber glove, blend of

Sugar

Warm milk

Jameson.

He was the quietest pup the vet ever encountered.

I said,

“He has a lot to be quiet about.”

He fitted in the palm of my hand, melting brown eyes and snow-white paws. He was, the vet said,

“A cross between a terrier and a pug.”

“A mongrel?”

I said.

The vet nodded.

“Like myself,”

I ventured.

He didn’t disagree.

The psycho’s wallet yielded a driver’s licence in the name of Declan Smyth. Credit cards (gold) and other data revealed him to be nineteen, a student of engineering at NUIG.

A member of Galway’s foremost lap dancing club. (We had a lap dancing club?).

Where?

There was a nice tidy package of coke, some “E” tabs, and close to six hundred in notes. Paid for the vet.