Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

Light comes in. We know a few of the guards: Squinty, Poxy, Bandit (because of his one arm), Pacino (his scarred face), Chunnel (his big nostrils), FDR (he can barely walk). Except for Squinty, they don’t speak any English or, if they do, they won’t. Squinty only has about five words and it’s pointless asking him anything. We know none of the other prisoners. If there’s a leader, it’s an Indian in jeans and Andy’s shoes. Some of the others seem to defer to him. But really, that’s not important. They don’t give a shit about us; they don’t even see us anymore.

Dreams of food. Cadbury’s chocolate, cream doughnuts, golden glistening fish and chips. Beer, a real pint of Guinness, viscous, bitter, smooth.

And her, always her. Those eyes and that smile. Those long legs that invite you to touch her, to hold her, to take her on the bed, to remove her green skirt and white panties. To feel her breath on yours, to ease yourself inside of her, to screw her and hold her and lick her sweat. And then to lie next to her on the cool sheets.

Sit there, bored, scratch myself, throw Scotchy a cricket, but he doesn’t stir. Sit there.

I pick one fly out of the hundreds and try to follow it. It lands in the slop bucket, takes off, lands on Fergal, takes off again, back to the slop bucket, over to me, lays something on my arm (got to keep still, so it can), and off again. It’s a nice symmetry, Scotchy, Fergal, me-the flies keeping us moored together through a bucket of our own liquid shit.

Eat your crickets, Bruce, harder to catch now, Scotchy says, and throws his back. I grab the fucker and I do eat it, and he smiles at me.

It’s another third day and we get unlocked. The whistle goes, and we walk around the yard, keeping to ourselves, frightened. No one speaks to us; we stay away from everyone else. For a minute, I stare angrily at the man wearing my sandals and then I catch myself at it and stop. The whistle blows, and we take our bucket and our straw and go back in.

Guards come and produce padlocks from a bag. Lock us down. Close the door.

I sit there wondering if the others will bother to speak. Fergal’s agitated and he does:

Boys, listen, wee old bloke with the limp was giving me the eye. Think I might be on ta something. He’s got information for us, I can tell, maybe about Big Bob, Fergal says, excitedly.

Maybe he wanted your arse, I suggest, slowly.

Scotchy grins at me.

No, no, he knows something, Fergal persists. Doesn’t trust you two, but he does me.

Aye, maybe he’s the head boy on the fucking escape committee, wants your help with the glider they’re making in block C, Scotchy says, with heavy sarcasm.

I wink at him.

No reason to get all eggy, Fergal says.

All the reason in the world, I think, Scotchy retorts.

Fergal grunts and goes back to the belt buckle.

Scotchy nods at me and I nod back. I try to think of something funny that will cheer us up, but I can’t. My brain is slow and won’t move.

I lie back and pick things out of my beard. I huddle down into the straw. Food comes, and we gobble it down. Dark, and we get afeared, but the noise at least keeps us company.

Another day and another. The weather breaks, and one day it rains and the whole floor oozes with damp, as if things weren’t bad enough. Scotchy develops a cough and his hacking keeps us awake at all hours. Fergal and I are probably thinking the same thing: that he’s going to be next. In the morning, we’re expecting him to be coughing blood, but he isn’t, and he actually looks a little better. He saves his voice, and when night comes he’s coughing less.

Gave us a scare there, mate, I whisper in the dark. Thought you were getting cholera or, more likely, AIDS or the clap or something.

Scotchy doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him smiling. I go back to sleep. Night, bad dreams. Another day of the same shite. Scotchy recovers from his cough, and we don’t get anything worse than we have. We are getting weaker, though, malnutrition and diarrhea, and I know that this cannot go on indefinitely.

But what else can we do but conserve our strength and hope for better times? Micawberism, but my brain is too addled for anything else.

On one day I decide that it’s my birthday. I don’t tell the others. I just sit there with the knowledge that my teenage years are done. And it’s that night that I go back, way back to where it all began.

Does the memory work like a journal or a logbook? Can you record words and faces and read them back years from now? Most professionals say no. You either use it or lose it. The mind isn’t a video camera or a computer or a big book. Oh aye? Well, how do you account for the smells and the details and the dialogue?

It’s all there.

Really.

And big brother, where are you? And Ma and Da, are you still in this world? You exist somewhere, even if only for a time in that place of dreams. Oh, I see it all.

My eyes close. It’s set. All those moments, together in one moment. Future, present, past.

And it comes back. PJ hiding. Davey Quinn. Mrs. Miller. The hair falling in tiny helicopter blades.

All those moments, together in one. Weird that many of them come together around the solstice, Saturnalia, Nativity, the mass of Christ; no, not weird, it’s a hard time. The Christmas of last year at the Europa, the Christmas of long ago in the lean, black tenement streets, the Christmas yet to be…

The rain ghostwriting itself on the windowsill. The smell of turf from the kitchen grate. Belfast there, in winter memory, oozed up from the mudflats of the lough.

PJ under the shed. Hiding. Toys with him. What toys? Fluorescent patches on soldiers moving about in the darkness. He’s playing antipersonnel mines and hurling the plastic bodies away from imaginary explosions. He’s three years older, but I’m more mature, preferring Lego to Action Men, which (oh, yes) is a moot point because I’ve lost all my Action Men to him on a bet as to whether I can make an effective parachute out of bedsheets that would take me without injury from the washhouse roof to the back garden…

Yes, I remember.

I want to hide too, and I think about either running away up into the fields or sneaking under the bunk in our bedroom, but that would mean going upstairs, which is out of the question since Granpa is wandering around up there in his pajamas, looking for his teeth and muttering things about the pope, the prime minister, and sometimes the kaiser.

Granpa.

I can run over to Davey’s house and try and wangle an extra dinner from his parents. They would hide me all evening if they could. They like me better than Davey himself because, despite being a Protestant, I always say “please” and “thank you” and call Shirley “Mrs. Quinn,” even though all of us know she isn’t really married to Davey’s da.

I’m mulling over the possibilities in front of the Flintstones on TV when the living room door opens.

Ma comes in with a pound note. She’s so pretty, young.

Here, she says.

What’s that for? I ask, affecting an unconvincing air of ignorance.

You know full well. Now get your brother.

I don’t know where he is, I attempt.

You don’t?

No.

Not even if there was ten pence in it for you?

You want me to squeal on PJ for a miserly ten p.?

Take it or leave it.

The coin sitting in her hand. Heads up. It’s one of those that has been defaced by the Provos. A big cross over the face of the queen.

Sometimes they don’t take those vandalized ones in the sweetie shop.

Ma looks at the ten pence and shrugs. She reaches in the pocket of her slacks. Blue ones, the ones with the permanent jam stain on the buttocks.