Reed Coleman - Gun Church

“So, you’ll be bobbling off then, Terry McGuinn.”

“Can I not now enjoy the fruits of me labors, Old Jack?”

“If history’s taught us any lesson, boyo, it’s that the need for revolutionaries ends with the revolution.”

“Revolutionary! Is that what I am?”

“Were, lad, were. Yer tense is thoroughly past.”

“Haven’t I a say in me own life?”

“It hasn’t been yer own life from the moment ya took another man’s in the name of the cause.”

“Where did I sign on fer that, Jack?”

“Terry, after all these years, have ya no more sense than a can a piss? The peace will come and the hoors will sing songs of brotherhood and understanding, but the Brits and Prods would sooner sip shite-flavored tea than forgive ya fer what ya’ve done.”

“It’s not the Brits and Prods that worry me.”

“Ya speak the truth, lad. ‘Tis our own boyos you’ve most to fear.” Old Jack pointed from his own eyes to Terry’s and back again. “Ya’ve seen too much. Ya know too many things about the men behind the men who’ll share power in this land. Yer a potential embarrassment that can’t be afforded.”

“Surely, Jack, I’m owed.”

“Owed! Owed what and by whom? Yer a killer, son, one who’s outlived his brief, if ya take my meaning. Listen to me, Terrence; many are the casualties of war that will come after the peace. So be gone. When I go, look under the table.”

“What’s there to see?”

“A short reprieve from your date at the knacker’s yard. Now, give us a kiss, lad. We won’t be seeing each other again in this world.”

McGuinn held tightly to the man who had been a father and mentor to him, but who had also brought the curse down on him. With the embrace finally broken, he watched Old Jack limp off, disappearing into a veil of bodies and smoke. McGuinn looked under the table and found an envelope thick with American money. He tucked the envelope away and headed out the back of the boozer into the alley. He didn’t return to his flat that night and hadn’t looked back until now …

According to the man I met at St. Nicholas’ churchyard in the Deptford section of London that night all those years ago, he had good reason to see accusation in the eyes of passersby. He told me that he had started killing before the age of fourteen and that he had been killing ever since.

“That first one was easy,” he said, in his peculiar monotone, “a man twice me age with a fierce reputation for mayhem of his own. A few of the lads diverted his attention with a brawl and I stepped right close beside him and put two through his liver.”

I said, “You don’t look like much of a killer.”

“Really? What the fook do ya suppose a killer looks like?”

“Not like you.”

“Well, then, Weiler, have a good look in the mirror and behold.” He laughed a cool, distant laugh. “Come now; stroll with me.”

McGuinn did very little talking about himself as we walked. He seemed far more interested in me and, narcissist that I was, I was only too happy to oblige him.

“Ya are a bit of a bastard, Weiler, aren’t ya?” It was a rhetorical question.

“More than a bit, but what’s that got to do with the story you’ve got to tell?”

“Everything.”

He reached his right arm around his back under his jacket and I froze. If he had taken any longer, I would have pissed myself.

“Take this,” he said, handing me a tattered spiral notebook. “Make something more of it than what’s there.”

“And what is there?”

“Me life, Weiler. Don’t cock it up.”

In the music business there’s an affectionate little niche for one-hit wonders; but, paradoxically, have two or three hits and you’re forgotten. It’s akin to being the second person to swim the English Channel or fly across the Atlantic. You are trivia. Maybe less. Kip had a gift none of us could touch, but he pissed it away. I cannot sometimes help but think he might have achieved literary immortality had he pulled a Harper Lee.

— BART STANTON MEYERS, GQ

Logging and mining towns are rough and tumble places. Brixton was no exception. It was the kind of place where even the emo kids had grown up hunting and field dressing deer. None of the locals wasted time mourning Frank Vuchovich. They crossed themselves and moved on. Brixtonians were stoic and not given to hand wringing or calling Child Protective Services. The parish priest was their first responder of choice. So, yeah, I fit right in here, like a foot in a glove.

I didn’t exactly have my choice of jobs when I moved to Brixton. The only reason I got this dream job was because I once charity-fucked Ellen Gershowitz, a new girl in the publicity department at Ferris, Ledoux. The head of PR had arranged for five journalists to have lunch with me at The Quilted Giraffe-an aptly pretentious venue for the decade of wretched pretension. The luncheon was a big deal at the time because I had stopped giving interviews. The moratorium was a total bullshit publicity stunt in order to create some hype for Flashing Pandora . Unfortunately, no one had cued in Ellen G, who had arranged for me to give an interview to her alma mater’s newspaper that morning.

Needless to say, Miss Gershowitz received the reaming of her life and was forced to apologize to me in person prior to the luncheon. That she had to throw herself on my mercy was indicative of just how low on the totem pole poor Miss Gershowitz was. Readers have some peculiar notions about the status of writers, the most foolish of which is that writers are treated like royalty by their publishers. Yeah, right! By the time Clown Car Bounce was published, I couldn’t get the PR department to return my calls. When I complained to the head of publicity that they misspelled my last name in the press release for Curley Takes Five , the editor in chief at Ferris called me up and told me to concern myself less with other people’s spelling and to concentrate more vigorously on my own vanquished skills. I was royalty, all right: King Shit.

Ellen Gershowitz was pleasant enough on the eyes when she wasn’t crying and apologizing. God, she was so miserable that day I think I would have slept with her even if she’d been a beast. Women aren’t the only suckers for wounded lovers and I was particularly vulnerable to tits and tears. I was never quite sure if she was more grateful for the mercy fuck or for the interview I gave her college newspaper the following day. I was too vain to ask. Regardless, a few more months of abuse at Ferris, Ledoux cured Ellen Gershowitz of publishing and drove her straight back to graduate school and a life in academia.

It’s not like my academic travails were closely guarded secrets. On the contrary, my deconstruction had been quite a public affair. The issue was that the newsworthiness of my plummet from grace had diminished in direct proportion to my sales. No one cared. I wasn’t old news. I was no news. I was forgotten. Better to be dead than forgotten. Just ask my father. That I’d suffered through seven years in Brixton without throwing myself into an industrial meat grinder was testament to my narcissism. People often mistook my egregious lack of pride for poor self-esteem. That wasn’t it at all. At the bitter end of our marriage, Amy used to say I was born with an ego in place of a heart. I didn’t disagree. Generally, writers are the most appalling narcissists.

When Ellen Gershowitz contacted me after hearing about my being run out of yet another job, I was amazed anyone had taken notice. I doubted colleges could get any more obscure than the schools I’d been thrown out of. My mistake was projecting my utter lack of pride onto those schools. When you’re fourth-rung material, even third-rung schools look down their noses at you. Ellen, who had passed through Brixton as an adjunct and was a friend of the chairman of the English department, got me the job. Only very recently have I stopped regretting that long-ago mercy fuck and forgiven her.