Colum McCann - Songdogs

Smoke was coughing out from the bottom of the blue door, moths and midges careening in the sky above the smoke. The men quickly leaned towards my father, asking him something. He grabbed a bucket from the barn, a red bucket, swinging it around and shoving it into the fist of a fireman. ‘Where’s the fucken fire truck?’ he shouted, cursing out more against the lustrous night. He was frantic with movement, lifting his arms up imploringly, then grabbing at the bucket again. The firemen tried to calm him down, drag him back from the flames, hysteria in their voices: ‘Hey, this one’s rocking, boys, watch the bloody beams don’t crash.’ A couple of hand-held extinguishers sprayed out frugally against the power of flame. My father was screaming about chemicals that might ignite, but the fire truck was unstuck now, coming along the lane with lights flaring like the carnival whirlywheel, red against the walls. The old man was watching the truck, waving his arms and pointing, stamping his feet up and down on the ground. I looked around at Mam clutching her blue dress, wiping her hands back and forth on the cloth, drying something off her hands.

A sharp crack issued into the night with violent acceleration, a joist swinging down in a graceful arc, and then the whole roof came down with a huge splintering sound, sending sparks yawing out over the courtyard, ecstatically fizzling out towards the countryside, caught on the air in somersaults and plunges which extinguished them, upwards in petition to the sky, then down in greyness to enrich the soil. Other sparks lisped sideways to fade away towards the river. The boom sounded out. Maybe there was a communion of beetles and spiders in uproar in there, a chainwork of scuttle among ripples of negatives and prints and lenses and slides and paper and half-eaten sandwiches, a litany sounding with the boom, ‘Ya fucken bitch, ya fucken bitch!’ The fire truck was working now, four frenzied men at the giant hose, all of them shielding their eyes from the wild up-burn. Mam was curled like the limb of a heavy orchard tree, bent down, staring at the ground, finished with the rocking. ‘Are ya all right, Mam?’ She didn’t even look up and I noticed the fringe of her hair was singed and the wisps on her arms were fizzled down to stubs. I sat down beside her, insane with pride, but all she said was: ‘Bedtime, m’ijo. ’

I found myself drifting off towards a small crowd that had gathered, waiting, watching. A slew of cars rolled their way down our laneway for a gawk that was a million times better than any television show — ‘Oh, come quick, look, Lyons’ darkroom is up in blazes.’

An irate fireman shooed the crowd backwards, out to the lane. Shouts rose up from the men, faces varnished at the sight. Women stood in dressing gowns and hair rollers, toothbrushes still wet in their fingers. An owl-faced man I had never seen before went down on his hunkers in front of me — ‘It’s all right son,’ he said, ‘everybody’s safe, there’s nothing to worry about.’ Suddenly a massive flab of arms came out of the crowd and negotiated its way past the stranger and gathered me in to Guinness stains and stale smoke — Mrs O’Leary, somehow aware that it was me, taking a hold of the front of my t-shirt, ‘Where’s your Mam?’ Another roar came across the courtyard — ‘Watch the sparks don’t make the house catch boys!’ Smoke was overcrowding the flames, bits of it shoaling around us so that Mrs O’Leary took out a handkerchief and told me to place it over my mouth, the waft of washing powder pouring into me.

Doctor Moloney, young and slim as a hurley stick, broke his way through the crowd behind us and sprinted over to the firemen who were moving around the darkroom wasplike in their jackets, muttering amongst themselves, some of them looking backwards over their shoulders at Mam, who hadn’t budged from the doorstep. The old man was being held back by firemen, two of them on either side, clamping his arms, his legs moving furiously beneath him, shouting something about a Leica lens and a certain roll of film. But he was held back from the smoke-throwing building as if pinned back against the world, an insect in a tray. Mrs O’Leary bent her chest over Mam and, with soothing words rushing forth, combed her hand over the tied-back hair.

‘There there, Juanita, there there.’

She told me to run to the kitchen and get some whiskey. ‘Quick, lad, before she goes into shock!’ But Doctor Moloney was suddenly hovering and holding me back with a hand on my shoulder — ‘It’s not whiskey she needs at all.’ Together they lifted Mam by either shoulder into the living room, which, after their decoration, was a commotion of colour — the vases, plants, amulets, tumultuous paintings, red coffee cans with flowers — and they sat her down in the giant armchair and lingered over her. It might as well have been a peaceful Sunday for the hush that had descended outside, except for the red light of the siren that seeped into the room in swirls from the eastern window. Mrs O’Leary had the kettle on in the kitchen, where the radio had been left on with a gospel song — Lead me on, precious Lord, through the ripening sun, lead me on, precious Lord, gonna get a glass of buttermilk before the day is done.

Mrs O’Leary snapped the radio off brusquely. Doctor Moloney had a white washcloth held across Mam’s brow while she sat placid in the chair, staring straight ahead without even the suggestion that she had ever learned to speak, fingering at the burnt fringe of her hair. ‘Don’t make the tea too hot!’ shouted the doctor. ‘And plenty of sugar in it!’ Mrs O’Leary came into the room, feeling her way delicately. She was blowing on the tea, dolloping some extra milk and sugar in it, when the door banged open behind her. My father stood there as huge as an ancient elk exhumed from the bog, shouting, ‘Let me smell her hands! Let me smell her hands!’ and two policemen came behind him, removing their hats as they crossed the threshold. ‘Let me smell her hands, I said!’ One of the policemen reached out and grabbed my father by the elbow. The old man looked around and stared at him, pivoted again. Then suddenly, gracefully, swanwise, sad, my father, seeing Mam’s face, turned his whole body around and ghosted his way through the policemen and back out into the night.

Outside in the courtyard the whole world had gathered to watch the darkroom stand in a shell of nothingness, hard and broken and brick-high without a ceiling and roamed around by figures quietly shaking their heads at the audacity of flame. Rumours were whispered into the palms of hands.

‘Isn’t it horribly sad, all the same?’

‘They say she burnt it.’

‘Torched it good-oh.’

‘Go on out of that.’

‘Well, that’s his comeuppance, I suppose.’

Boys my age were flinging stones at the gutted structure and edging their way closer, always closer, until they were swatted back by the adults, who themselves moved in for a better look. It was the most spectacular thing that had happened in years. I muttered to myself: I will never go to school again in my life, I will never go anywhere ever again. And, at the kitchen window, I watched the old man walk his way around the building, slowly following two firemen through the kicked-down door to emerge with his hands clasped to his head. Some firemen were dragging out the filing cabinets. In the living room Mrs O’Leary was saying, ‘It’s all right now, Juanita, I’ll stay with you the night,’ and she ran her fingers over Mam’s brow, all the time still incanting ‘there there there.’

Mrs O’Leary, withered down into herself, said to me: ‘You and your Mam are coming with me, she needs a little rest, she’s awful tired, you know. You’ll be staying with me for a few days until she’s better.’ And outside, my father, in a stained grey shirt, combing through the ashes of his darkroom.