Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

Yeah.

The adrenaline was coursing through me. Hours on an OP and suddenly seeing the target will do that for you. And I’d dreamed about Bob, dreamed of this very event, of this very night.

We drove out farther onto the island. The surface of the road went clay-colored and the lines voided themselves into two lanes. I wound the window down, the air cooling my damp skin.

Highway lights, trucks, petrol stations, the city in the rearview, and even in all this light, pollution, stars. Saturn and Venus and a labyrinth of concordances bringing me onward.

Onward to the inevitable. No, it wasn’t Darkey’s night, but maybe it was Bob’s. Aye, and suddenly, there was a cheerlessness within me. And perhaps almost a creeping reluctance. If Bob could only keep driving forever, if only he could keep going. All the way through Nassau County and Suffolk, all the way to the end of Long Island, where there are potato fields, where Gatsby had his mansion, and on out into the blackness of the Atlantic. Yes, keep driving, over the ocean, and like Alcock and Brown, we’ll crash somewhere near Clifden. I know this pub in Galway town, this lovely pub, we’ll pull in and have a jar and be on our way. Tell ya, Bob, you think the Guinness in the Four Provinces is good, there they take a year and a half to pull your pint.

A session, and then we’ll be off. Sea dogs and rose petals and away from that coast across the Great Bog and up to the mysteries of the Boyne Valley. We’ll be in Newgrange for the solstice, where the pagans brought the returning sun. And down at the river. King William was here and James over there. We’ll climb Tara and look out over the fifths. And then across another sheugh , I don’t know, we’ll hit Cumbria and the lakes and the Yorkshire Dales. We’ll go over oil rigs with their great burning lamps of fire. On east through the Baltic and Russia, and we’ll meet the sun again somewhere in the vast wastes of Siberia.

Bob, please understand me, real pain isn’t in the body, no, you may think that, but believe one who knows, it isn’t in the body or the mind. It’s in the spirit.

You’ll see. You’ll see soon.

Trucks, cars.

The teeming anthills, the moon, kisses of houselight in the shadows. A service station. American girls in jeans and white shirts. Fill your tank, Bob, and be about your way. Don’t stop, if you know what’s good for you. His black shirt, his little eyes, his hands like the claws of scorpions.

Amigo, despierta , I’m coming. I’m coming.

His fat paw on the lever. He puts in exactly ten dollars and curses when it comes up ten dollars and one cent. You need to lower your blood pressure, Bob. You need relaxation techniques. Yoga, tai chi, meditation. Chant the Om for an hour. Om mani padme hum . Maybe it’ll help. You’re too stressed. Look at ya. He turns and gazes towards the girls. Says something. One laughs, at him or with him? Who can tell? He twists his neck back and rubs it. Stress. Maybe it’s a conscience, no? Not bloody Jiminy. But hurry now, Bob, pay. Get your candy bars, you have your smokes already. Pay, go. Back to your car. Hurry. Go.

Amigo, despierta , I’m coming.

Yes…

He came out muttering and shaking his head. He got back in and stalled the car again. He tried to talk to a girl in a black Corolla, but she wasn’t interested. He drove. I edged out of the shadows next to the car wash. Only another fifteen minutes and his turn signal went on. We cut off the highway somewhere I’d never heard of. People lived here. It was a community. Big houses, streets. Near the water, but actually I had no idea at all where we were. A while ago, there’d been a sign pointing out something to do with Theodore Roosevelt back on the motorway, but this place wasn’t it. It wasn’t anywhere. Quiet town, nice, pretty, I liked it. He drove away from the shops and the town center and up a tree-lined street that was denuded of leaves, of cover. Bob stopped his car and paralleled it into a spot. He got out and went up a path. His house was a white bungalow with a metal fence around a small garden. There was a shriveled pumpkin on the doorstep. When was Halloween? I’d missed it. I was outside of time, somehow. Had the election taken place? Who won? Who was president? The weeks had blurred. I parked the car slowly. Parking’s not my strong suit. Driving’s not my strong suit, but parking’s worse, and I didn’t want to bump anything and have the fucking neighbors coming out and asking me where my fucking parking permit was. Somehow, I squeezed in the big Caddy and crossed the street.

I paused at a tree near Bob’s front gate and checked the road for dog walkers and insomniacs and other assorted trouble. Nothing.

Bob was in the living room, and he’d put the TV on. He got up and went into, presumably, the kitchen, got himself a six-pack of beer, came back, and sat there. He opened a cold one and drank and flipped the channels. He wasn’t going to shower? No, Bob wanted to calm his nerves after driving drunk all the way home. He would have a few drinks, and then he’d get his shit together. Shower, get out his wankmag, go to bed with a job well done. Another day, another drive home blitzed to fuck and no casualties. No probs for Bob. He drank his beer and tossed the can over his head into a trash can. It didn’t go in. I was out there too long. I checked the street again. Yeah, Bob, you’re the only victim tonight, mate, sorry. Have a beer and get your head straight, you poor love, it must be shite having to do things all by yourself and with a bunch of new boys, most of whom were green around the gills. Jesus. And what with Ramón piling on the pressure and everything. Poor old Darkey, poor old Sunshine, poor old Bob.

I opened the front gate and went down the path. His garden was dry and unkempt. There was rubbish in it. I stared at the pumpkin, which was carved in far too nice a way for Bob to have done it (unless he had hidden talents). I opened the screen door and stood for a moment in a tiny porch. Letters lay trampled into the floor, a bill, a vote reminder, a yellow envelope from a debt collection agency. I picked them up and looked them over and set them down again. I turned the handle on the front door. It was locked. Fuck. He wasn’t so drunk that he hadn’t locked the front door. Well, good on you, mate. At least you weren’t a total useless shite.

I opened the screen door again and went around the side of the house until I was in the backyard. More garbage, tires, a cement mixer. I tried the back door. It, too, was locked, but there was a top window open in the kitchen. I peered through and checked inside. All seemed to be ok. I put my hand through the top window, flipped the handle on the big side window, and pulled it open all the way. The kitchen door was closed, but under it you could see the flickering light coming from the TV in the front room. I climbed through the window and onto the sink. I was about to go into the living room when I heard Bob get up. I pulled out the Colt and waited there, but he was only swishing the curtains over, and I heard him sit down again. I chambered a round, opened the kitchen door, and went straight into the adjoining living room. The light was on and I adjusted for a moment. Bob’s back was to me, and the local news was on the telly.

Bob, I said.

He dropped his beer can and started to get up.

Hands on your head, Bob, it’s fucking Banquo, I said.

He puts his hands up, but I think the reference probably eluded him.

Holy fuck, Bob said, and when he turned round to face me, he was white with terror. His hands fell into a pleading gesture.

Hands on your head, Bob, or I’ll shoot you.

He put his hands back up, and I motioned for him to sit down in the chair. I turned it around so that he was completely facing me. I sat in a wicker chair opposite. He was smiling weakly at me. Even for Bob, it was stomach-churning.