Colum McCann - Songdogs

Mam scoured her hand over Cici’s ribcage — my father had told her of the famine in Ireland where once a man and his wife had been found frozen to death by the hearth of an empty fire. The woman’s feet were frozen to the man’s breastbone where he had tucked them under his shirt to warm them. It was as if they had been nailed there. Mam, her mouth dry, rose up, took the blankets and rubbed them over Cici’s body. ‘Michael!’ Cici’s fingers were moving now, slowly against each other, as if counting money. Mam leaned up and whispered things in her ear. She suddenly noticed how grey and bare the tower was, but it was still too cold to drag Cici outside. The sun wasn’t high enough. ‘Come on!’ She took Cici’s head in her hands and the head lolled as if broken. There were acne marks on Cici’s chin and tiny hairs that stuck out like the needles of conifers. The mouth moved within the pockmarks and Mam went furious again with the blankets. Cici mumbled something and my mother leaned down and left a dry kiss on her forehead.

‘You will be all right.’

Keep her warm. Talk to her until the sun rears up further. Try to find some food. ‘Michael!’ Cici began to move a little more, to almost laugh, tiny exhausted gollops.

From somewhere very far away, down the mountain, came a faint shout. Mam clasped Cici’s stockinged feet, rubbed warmth into them. A curious thing occurred as Cici’s eyes opened wider — a swarm of giant brown butterflies flocked out from the trees below them, all of them in unison, one giant dun sheet that ran its way through the forest, thousands of them at once, barrelling out, into the trees and upwards again, their wings pounding their slender bodies. My mother attributed it to some sort of miracle — there was always a deep need for miracles, she thought. Cici later put it down to the simple vagaries of nature — the butterflies had obviously been flushed from their habitat by an animal in the trees, a threat of some sort, a natural phenomenon.

When my father came up the path with Delhart, half an hour later, he carried a jug of wine. He was amazed to see Mam naked, rocking back and forth in the sunlight, with Cici beside her, under the blankets, dressed in Mam’s clothes. A washing line was strung up between pine poles, and Cici’s garments flapped, animated in the breeze. ‘What happened?’ said Delhart to my mother. My mother gave him a vicious look, turned and stared at my father. ‘An accident happened, Michael.’ Her voice quivering.

Cici looked up from the bed of blankets. ‘Oh, it’s the lover boys.’

The old man sat down on the ground and took his hat off, left it beside Cici. Delhart went away, down the mountain, without a word, carrying the wine. Mam went over to the washing line and put on Cici’s dress.

‘I am staying,’ she said to my father. ‘I am staying here until she’s better. And don’t ask me for changing my mind.’

* * *

Old Father Herlihy didn’t recognise me in the Spar. He was in buying a packet of cigarettes, flirting with the girl behind the counter. ‘And how’s the studying coming along?’ he was saying, a glint in his eye. She looked like one of the O’Meara girls, dollops of freckles on her cheeks. Father Herlihy has put on a bit in the girth, it was propped out over his trousers, mashing against the buttons of his thin black shirt. He was shaking absentmindedly in his black jacket pocket for some matches. The counter-girl gave him a smile and took out a box from the side of the register: ‘Don’t worry about it, Father, they’re on the house.’ Out he walked, smiling, straight past me without a second glance. He left fifty pence on the counter and she was in a right tizzy for a moment. She shoved it in her pocket and started looking at her nails, bits of red polish on them. Turned up the radio and smiled at me: ‘I love this song,’ she said. I must admit it wasn’t too bad — felt like slamdancing through the washing powder myself. Filled up five bags of groceries, put three of them in the front basket, hung one on either side of the handlebars.

The black Raleigh was none too comfortable, the springs gone in the seat, and there was a big fat skip in the pedals, a hiccup. It wasn’t easy to balance with all the heavy bags, and I had to retrieve a packet of biscuits that skipped out when I grazed against a lamppost. Goldgrain, his favourite. I think they’ve changed the packet though, and I almost overlooked them in the shop. Got him a pack of Major too, but that’s the last one of those I’m going to buy, he’ll be hanging his lungs out on the clothesline to dry, like grandmother’s rabbits, fluttering away in the wind.

Down along main street, some of the old farmers, fresh from the pubs, were leaning across the doors of their cars. Fine Gael posters from the election strewn out around their wellington boots. One of the farmers was crunching his boot through a politician’s face. All the Fianna Fáil signs were still up on the lampposts, looking out over the town, but someone had ripped the others down. The town’s not much different, little has changed, a bit like the kitchen. A tawny labrador scrounged around the back of the video shop, nosing his way through the boxes. Inside, two young girls, swamped in bright colours, were staring upwards at the television screens, entranced. Onwards and away, I said to myself. The red tiles on the town lavatory walls hadn’t faded a bit. The smell hit me when I went past — a curious cocktail together with the distant sea.

A couple of drowsy gulls moved up from the sea and over the roofs of the houses.

I rode down along the river, chocolate wrappers floating on the surface, past the old house of the Protestant ladies — I’ve no idea who’s living there now, but it looked a bit tumbledown, a rotting hulk of a car in the gateway. A couple of schoolboys hung around in the entrance, throwing pebbles. They gathered together and started elbowing one another. One of them gave me the middle finger — a new gesture in these parts. Heard a truck rumble behind me, beeping madly, and suddenly the created draft sucked me outwards, almost smacking me into the truck.

But it felt nice to be out and rolling, that song from the shop jumping around in my throat, all the three miles home, the sea getting closer and closer, me never quite reaching it.

A bird had made a nest in the back of an old discarded fridge near the grotto where we used to scrawl our graffiti. Nothing written on the good Virgin these days, although years ago someone scrawled Man United Rules across her chest in vibrant red ink, and there were always great jokes going around about Norman Whiteside knocking in a header from Mary Magdalene, and Bryan Robson putting one over on poor Saint Joseph, and nutmegging the good Lord himself. We would sit with our backs against the gate and slurp our bottles, smoke cigarettes in the cups of our hands so the red glow couldn’t be seen from the road. Sometimes there’d be fights in the woods and we’d gather in circles, chant them on. But it seems quiet and litter-free these days, apart from the fridge. I stopped and peered in the big white carcass — thrush eggs sitting on one of the metal racks, down near the vegetable drawer. Twigs wrapped in near the back coil. Some birdshit on the electrical cord. I sat for a while, but a few people stared at me from their cars and I felt a bit strange, got on the bike again. Curious how different the sense of space is here. In Wyoming I can take off and go walking for miles on end without seeing a soul, only a few cattle scrubbing away on the lands, every now and then a horse breaking the hills. Land like that seeps its way into you, you grow to love it, it begins to thump in your blood. But it’s confined here, the land, the space. Doesn’t feel much like mine anymore — it’s like when I’m with the old man, floating around him, not really touching him.