Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

There wasn’t a potato in Ireland before the seventeenth xcentury,” Gerry said as he sat down next to us. A look passed between him and Touched that I couldn’t interpret.

“Saint Patrick ate potatoes,” Jackie muttered as he slunk down in his chair and knocked back his beer in one.

“What’s your opinion, Sean?” Gerry asked me.

“What’s the debate?”

“Jackie, bless his heart, believes that you eat corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage on Saint Patrick’s because that’s what Saint Patrick himself ate as he wandered round the emerald isle.”

“Well, I’m no history expert.” I nodded at Touched and he nodded back. “But I thought Walter Raleigh brought back the spud from South America and that was a good bit after Patrick, I believe,” I said.

“You are absolutely right, Sean. And you are put in your place, Jackie,” Gerry said and turned to Touched. “Now let me hope that your conversation with young Sean here was more riveting than mine.”

“We chanced over many subjects, Gerry. I was just finished telling Sean here about me and Corky Cochrane’s old lady,”

Touched replied.

“Oh aye, I remember her, she has the MS now, doesn’t she?” Gerry said.

“No, no, not MS, she has lupus, early-onset lupus,”

Touched said. “Funny story, actually. Tell you, Sean, just before I had to, uh, gather up my stakes, shall we say, she tells me she has lupus. Right, well, I’m a good Catholic and I did Latin to A level, and I never heard of lupus before and I think bloody hell, lupus, she’s been bitten by a werewolf.”

Gerry and Touched both laughed. Jackie did not and I knew that this was a good opportunity to establish a bit of character. It might have been a bit much rubbing it in his face with that Walter Raleigh line.

“I don’t get it, sorry, David,” I said to Touched.

“Lupus, lupin, the wolf, you know? You see, I got it mixed up with lycanthropy,” Touched said.

I looked at him blankly.

“Do you get it now?” Touched asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, it’s not important,” Touched said and raised his eyebrows at Gerry as if to say, nice kid, but bloody hell, could be a bit of a dumbass.

Sonia and Kit appeared, sat down.With the women among the men, the mood changed completely. Gerry became more gregarious, Touched less suspicious. The subject changed to what was playing at the cinema.

We chatted and drank.

I was the last to arrive, so I knew it would be my shout next and when Jackie finished the last of the beer I went to the bar to get a pitcher of Sam Adams. And suddenly, of course, she was there. I hadn’t seen her before, but obviously she’d been there all evening. Watching me. She was wearing skintight black jeans, a black silk blouse, and high heels. She was deliberately, overly made up, but the fake glamour couldn’t hide her good looks. Her shock of red hair and those proud crimson lips that were sipping gin. She saw me but she didn’t acknowledge me. She was talking to a surfer boy and had positioned herself so that she could see McCaghan’s booth quite clearly. I didn’t know how long she’d been there but Simon must have given her the heads-up.

Our eyes met briefly. She looked away and laughed at something the surfer boy said and her laughter came across the room delicately, like a waterfall breaking over the edges of the rocks. I took the pitcher back to the table, more confident and reassured. My guardian angel was on the case, a step ahead, as all guardian angels should be. And when I sat down, Gerry, Touched, and Jackie were all eclipsed. Diminished. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, with their foolish talk of the Cuchulainn of the Uladh and Patrick and potatoes. She was the brains, the spikenard, the white-shirted predator among the thistles. And I was no mean boy. I had been there. To the depths. Mastering the hard places of the nocturnal world. I had brought destruction on greater men than these. Darkey White, Sunshine, Big Bob, all the while careful, professional, ice cold, singing happily the sweet songs of the hammer of retribution.

I was not afraid of them. If anything it should have been the reverse.

The evening was drawing to a close. I was comfortable and relaxed. Kit, unfortunately, was wedged between Jackie and her da but the center of gravity was at my end of the table.

The conversation drifted among music and movies and television. I contributed now and again but the interrogation phase was over.

I excused myself to go to the toilet. I didn’t need to go to get my shit together or calm my nerves. Gerry was fine and Touched wasn’t the monster of the Six report. Nah. I just needed to take a piss.

This was a scumball bar, but they had tried to gentrify the toilet by putting in electric hand dryers, burlesque prints, and a chalkboard above the urinal for graffiti. The graffiti was stuff about surfers and the Red Sox and there were a few anti-Mexican comments. Above the board and deep into the wall someone had scrawled “Fuck your chalkboard, you yuppie fucks” in six-inch-high letters. I’d bet money it was Touched.

I’d have to ask him about it, I was musing, when, without looking round, I knew Jackie had come in behind me. The kid had a presence and a distinctive smell. Old Spice, surf wax, and zit cream. He was standing there, thinking he was invisible, trying to decide what he was going to say or do.

I took a piece of chalk and wrote: “You like staring at my cock, Jackie?”

I zipped up, turned.

“So you are fucking queer then, are you?” Jackie said, sneering.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said, neutral, calm.

“Wipe my name off that fucking board,” he demanded, his pupils dilated, ready.

“You wipe it off,” I said with a smile.

“Wipe it or I’ll fucking make you wipe it.”

I let the tension fall from my shoulders and waited for him to come at me. He’d swing first. He’d had about six or seven beers. He’d be slow. I stuck out my jaw to give him a target. He’d come at my head with a big right hook. Just needed a wee bit of encouragement.

“Now you’re starting to annoy me,” I said. “Why don’t you piss off before I have to teach you how to act around your elders.”

“Aye, and before I brain you, you better tell me what you think you’re fucking playing at with Kit,” he snarled.

“I don’t know what you mean, pal.”

“You were all over her, don’t think I couldn’t see it. She’s my girl. You fucking lay off. Ok? Unless you’re looking for trouble, that is.”

I took a breath. What was the right thing to do? What would Samantha want me to do? What would Kit want me to do? Of course I knew. Taking him would be fun but bad form.

“Listen, mate, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kit is a nice girl, but she’s not my type. I just want a job and a quiet life,” I said, figuring that defusing the situation was probably the better way to go. I stepped backwards to give him more psychic space to think.

Jackie, however, was spoiling for a fight. His blood was up and he was not going to be denied.

“I seen you looking at her, I’m gonna have you, fucker,” he said, squaring up to throw that obvious opening punch.

I backed off again.

“I’m not going to fight you, it’s ridiculous, I don’t want to fight you.”

“Chickenshit,” Jackie said.

“Aye, call me what you like, I’m leaving,” I said.

I washed my hands and headed for the door.

“Wipe my name off that board.”

“Piss away off, you wee shite,” I said.

Jackie lunged at me. He did indeed lead clumsily with the right and, in his haste, he caught one foot behind the other and practically fell on me. I stepped to one side and let Jackie’s momentum carry him into the hand dryer. His head banged into the swivel head of the blower and he collapsed to the floor. He scrambled away from me, blood oozing into his left eye from a two-inch cut above the eyebrow.