Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

I put it in my mouth. It was salty and revolting. I swallowed and struggled to keep it down.

“Thank you,” I said.

“What it taste like?” Dinger asked.

“You never tasted dulse?”

“No,” he said, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.

“What it taste like?” he asked again.

It tasted like something that had been shaved off the bottom of a trawlerman’s seaboot and then matured by nailing it to the floor of a particularly nasty whorehouse for a couple of decades.

“It tastes ok,” I said. “You wanna try?”

Dinger shook his head. He wasn’t a complete fool. It started to rain. He pulled out a Glasgow Rangers hat and put it on. It was wool, so it didn’t do much against the rain but it kept the wind out of his ears.

“Dinger, I want to talk to you,” I tried again.

“Do you want to go on an adventure?” Dinger asked me.

“Dinger, I’d love to, some other time, but listen, I wonder if you could do me a favor? I’m looking for your brother Slider and your ma said that you knew where he’s been going all week. He’s been giving you a ride in his car, hasn’t he?”

“You talk to my ma?”

“Aye.”

“Huh. We go on an adventure.”

It was really getting late now and I wondered if I was wasting my time with this wean.

“If I go on an adventure with you, will you tell me where your brother is?” I asked him.

“Yes, I tell if you do dare,” Dinger said conspiratorially.

“I already ate the seaweed, isn’t that enough?”

“You do dare,” Dinger insisted angrily.

“Ok, ok, what’s the dare?”

“I dare you to walk along the pipe,” he said, pointing to a sewage outflow pipe that led from the shore to the lough. It didn’t look like a particularly dangerous task, even though it was covered with seaweed and barnacles. The tide was still out and the water was only a few feet deep.

“Ok. If I walk along that pipe for a minute, you’ll tell me where Slider is? Agreed?”

Dinger nodded.

“Shake on it,” I insisted.

Hesitantly and with a great deal of consideration, he put out his left hand. His fingers were crossed and I knew that he was trying to stroke me.

“Ok, Dinger, your right hand and no crossies,” I said.

Dinger frowned and put out his right hand instead.

I climbed on top of the sewage pipe and walked along it for a few paces. It had the worst smell in the world and a few sad-looking gulls flying about picking up complete turds from the water. The stench was too fucking much. I jumped off and walked back to Dinger, who was now petting a stray dog.

“Dogs hear things in ultraviolet. They hear everything high pitched, like Batman. No, it’s not called ultraviolet, it’s something else. Ultrasomething but not ultraviolet,” he said.

I grabbed Dinger by the arm and held him tight. I bent down so that I was eye level with him.

“Now, Dinger, listen to me. I kept my part of the bargain, I walked along the pipe. You have to keep your end. Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Dinger said, tears coming into his eyes.

“Why not?”

“If I tell you, you’ll go away and I will have nobody to play with. Monkey and Stevey don’t play with me.”

“I’ll come back and I’ll bring Slider with me. You like Slider. Slider takes you places, doesn’t he? Slider takes you on adventures.”

Dinger’s face brightened.

“Slider takes me on adventures. He says secret missions like on TV.”

“Slider took you on a secret mission?” I asked, letting go of his arm and sitting next to him on the sand.

Dinger shook his head.

“Secret,” he insisted.

“Oh, you can tell me, I’m Slider’s best and oldest friend and I want to find him. We’ll all go on an adventure together, would you like that?” I said.

Dinger grinned.

“And we can go in Slider’s car?” Dinger asked.

“Of course we can go in Slider’s car, and we can get ice cream afterwards. You and me and Slider.”

“Yeah, and we don’t ask Stevey or Monkey.”

“No, we wouldn’t ask them. Just the three of us, you and me and Slider. Now, where is Slider?” I asked softly.

“He’s with the car.”

“Where did he go in the car? On a secret mission?”

Dinger nodded solemnly.

“Where in the car?” I asked.

“To the secret place. To the lodge, the old lodge with the arch,” Dinger said in a whisper.

“Where’s the old lodge, Dinger?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” I persisted.

“No.”

“Oh, that’s a shame, we won’t be able to get Slider and go on an adventure,” I said.

“We go adventure,” Dinger said, bursting into tears.

“Dinger, you think for a minute, where is the secret lodge?”

Dinger stopped crying immediately, closed his eyes, and held his breath.

“Orange Lodge,” Dinger said.

“Yeah, it’s an Orange Lodge, where is it?”

His brow furrowed and he touched his forehead onto the sand.

I knew hardly anything about the Orange Order, just the basics: it was a working-class Protestant secret society founded in the eigh-teenth century. It honored the memory of William of Orange, who had become king of Britain and Ireland after he defeated James the Second, the last of the illstarred Stuart kings.

Dinger stood up.

“Go home, Lucky, go home,” he said to the dog, who looked at him for a second and then ran across the sand. When the dog was definitely out of earshot, Dinger beckoned me close with his finger.

“I know where,” he whispered triumphantly.

“Where? Where’s the lodge?”

“Near that big monument,” Dinger said.

“What big monument?”

“The big monument across the water.”

“In Scotland?” I asked, stifling a panic.

“No, no, no, just over there,” he said, pointing out across the lough.

A monument over there.

I tried to see what he was pointing at, but it was so dark that you couldn’t see anything across the lough except the lights of Belfast, Rathcoole, and Carrickfergus.

And then it came to me.

“Jesus, you don’t mean the Knockagh Monument, do you, Dinger?”

The Knockagh Monument was a huge war memorial that had been placed on Knockagh Mountain near Belfast. I didn’t know much about it, except that it was a massive granite stone, which I think was carved with the names of the Irish dead from the two world wars. It was certainly enormous, and from up on top of the mountain you could see fifty miles in every direction. It was a makeout place for teenagers. A single road to the monument surrounded by forest and farms. An isolated, out-of-the-way spot. I didn’t recall any old abandoned Orange Lodges around there, but I didn’t know the area that well.

Dinger nodded excitedly.

“Dinger, let me get this straight. Slider took you to an Orange Lodge near the Knockagh Monument?”

“Bird kite, an eagle kite,” he said.

“You flew a kite at the Knockagh?”

“Aye. Knockagh, Knockagh, Knockagh. Slider said wait in car and we go see all of the world and fly the kite. Eagle kite.”

“He told you to wait in the car outside an old abandoned Orange Lodge near the Knockagh, right? And there was an arch outside the lodge?”

“Secret mission. Wait in the car at the lodge. Doink, doink, doink.”

“Did he ever mention a girl, a little girl?” I asked.

“We fly the kite, very windy.”

“Ok, forget the girl. Can you tell me anything more about the lodge?”

“We fly kite,” Dinger insisted.

“You went from the lodge to the Knockagh Monument and flew the kite?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dinger said, exasperated with all the questions. He started walking away from me. But I had enough.