Colum McCann - Songdogs

‘You’re an awful man for barging in.’

‘Yeah, well.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Was only kidding about the bath,’ I said.

‘Fair enough.’

He climbed in under the sheets. He didn’t even reach for his cigarettes, just pulled the sheet up as far as his waist. The tea was growing cold on the bedside table.

‘D’ya remember?’ he said, and then he stopped.

‘Remember what?’

‘Ah, Jaysus,’ he said, ‘I remember nothing at all these days.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘You’re better off that way. Remembering nothing.’

He reached over to get the cup of tea.

‘You know what someone once said to me, Dad?’

‘What’s that?’

‘They said memory is three-quarters imagination and all the rest is lies.’

‘That’s a load of codswallop, that is. That’s horseshit taught by flies. Who said that?’

‘Just a friend.’

‘Talking through his arse.’

I sat on the edge of the bed. I surprised myself when I just summoned it up. ‘Listen, Dad, why did ya do that to Mam?’

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘What?’ he said. He moved a little.

‘Why did ya let that happen?’ I said. ‘With the photos.’

‘Ah, Jaysus, is that what this is all about?’

‘I’m just asking. Why did ya…?’

‘Can’t a man forget?’

‘Don’t think so.’

He was quiet for a moment, looking at his teacup. ‘And ya know what someone once said to me?’ he said, pointing his forefinger at me. ‘Don’t know who the fuck it was, but he had it right — he said that, when you come into a rich man’s house, the only place to spit is in his face.’

He ran his hands over his face, waiting for a reply, then said: ‘So what the fuck happens when ya come into an old man’s house, huh?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ah, bollocks,’ he said. ‘All I’m looking for is a bit of peace and quiet. Go away. Let me sleep.’

He turned his head towards his pillow.

‘You know where I was, Dad? Those first few years when I was away? You know where I was?’

‘Where?’

‘I was looking for Mam.’

He sat up and stared at me with one eye closed, and the life drained away from his face, came down to whiteness. ‘What were you doing a stupid thing like that for?’ he asked.

‘Just because.’

‘Just because what?’

‘Because.’

‘Ah, Jaysus.’

‘Couldn’t find a trace.’

Silence slinked its way around the room. The tea was almost finished but he was draining the last drops of it, holding it up in the air and waiting for something to come out, watching the brown runnel form along the side, licking the drop from the rim of the cup. He held it out in front of him, ran his fingers in amongst the leaves. He started flicking the tea leaves off the end of his forefinger.

‘For Jaysus sake, Conor.’

‘I’m in Wyoming now,’ I said.

‘What the hell are ya doing in Wyoming? Nothing but trees there.’

‘That’s not what you used to say.’

‘Ah, to hell what I used to say.’

I told him about cleaning the swimming pools, the ski lifts, Kutch and Eliza, the fist on the tower, about how, every now and then, I take off on foot, go wandering. ‘I like it there,’ I told him. He gave me a nod and started humming ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ — I couldn’t tell if he was asking me to leave the room, or if he was just lost in his own little world. He said nothing more about Mam, just kept on humming and I was left there on the side of his bed, thinking of those words, hit the road Jack don’t you come back no more no more no more no more. I wanted him to say something more, anything, anything at all, and I stared at his face as if I could carve an answer out of that, but I suppose what he was suggesting to me is that you don’t spit any differently in an old man’s house than you do in a rich man’s house, that it all comes down to the very same thing.

When he woke me it was still dark outside. I was curled up at the bottom end of his bed. During the night he must have put a blanket over me. It was folded all the way in under my feet, and a hot-water bottle had grown cold by my toes. He had taken a pillow and propped it in under my head. The marmalade cat was curled in with me, the saucer-ashtray full on the bedside table. He told me that he’d make breakfast for me, that I’d need something for the trip to Dublin. Rubbed his chest and went out the door. I took the saucer full of cigarette butts and went to the bathroom, flushed the fag-ends down the bowl, had a shave — my first shave all week — washed out the sink, had a quick scrub, went downstairs.

I had to laugh when I saw the sunnyside eggs he had ready for me.

He sat opposite me at the table, wearing a white shirt dotted with bits of egg. He was still rubbing his fingers over his chestbone, deliberating the rising of the sun out the kitchen window. And then he opened a button on his shirt and his fingers moved in further around his body. For a moment he shoved them in under his armpit, closed his arm down on them, kept them there for a moment, took them out, almost Napoleonic in the gesture. He held the fingers up to his nose and sniffed them, scrunched up his nose and chuckled.

‘You really think I need a bath?’

‘Yeah, I suppose you do.’

‘I’m a bit on the smelly side, amn’t I?’

‘A bit.’

‘I noticed it last night,’ he said. He coughed deeply, went to the kitchen sink and reached across for the bottle of washing-up liquid.

‘What’s that for?’

‘No shampoo in the bathroom,’ he said.

‘Of course there is,’ I said. ‘I have some in there.’

‘You don’t need to pack it?’ he asked.

‘Not really, I can do without.’

‘Are ya all packed?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Didn’t have much time to talk, did we, really?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Sometimes you have too much time. Then you figure that too much time isn’t any time at all. Know what I mean?’

‘Not really.’

‘Come on up, then. You can chat to me from outside the door.’

He walked out of the kitchen and I backpedalled in front of him, punching him lightly on the shoulder, until he told me that he’d deck me if I didn’t stop, that he still has it in him to throw a good punch.

* * *

Headlights swerving down the narrow road towards our house. New territory for the fire department — they had run this road many times before on fire drills for the meat factory, but never this far along the road, so that when one of the trucks tried to thread its way through the laneway a wheel got caught in a rutted ditch and it slid sideways and blocked the entrance. A chorus of obscenities rose up from the men.

Mam was rocking back and forth on the front porch, her head into the blue crucible of her dress. The old man was trying to connect the hose to the tap at the front of the house, shouting ‘Jesus fucken Christ!’, with the hair outshooting from his pate in brusque surprise, ‘Jesus Christ!’ The hose sprayed around the tap — a tiny hole had developed in it, which he told me to hold my finger over. A rainbow spectrum arising against the wisteria on the wall. The hose was hardly long enough to reach. My father thumped himself vigorously on the side of the head — ‘Ya fucken bitch, ya fucken bitch!’ Twelve firemen in yellow jackets were using a winch to take the truck out beyond, others running down the lane, bellies jogging, one of them still in his pyjamas so that his penis leaped out from the gap in his pants. As he ran he pulled on his yellow jacket top, stuffed his penis back in his pyjama bottoms, and moved along with one hand held over his groin, as if wounded. Well into middle age, they breathed like freight trains when they reached the end of the lane and were temporarily immobilised at the sight of the low squat darkroom aflame.