Colum McCann - Fishing the Sloe-Black River

Still and all, she’s quiet now after all the rumpus. Strange what might go on in a head like that, her there staring out the window of the dorm. Dolores said she caught a goo of her many a time up there on the roof of the caboose with her old man, before the crash. Staring at these maps with a small red torch they were. Something to do with night vision or something. Help them watch the goings on. There’ll be none of that for a while. Only stars she’ll be seeing are the ones from those little yellow pills they’re shoving down her throat. Her and Georgina’ll have a ball when they bring Georgie back from Dublin. That’s what Georgina gets for being a speed freak anyway. Ice water injected into the veins. Nasty stuff. Sends the heart rate rocketing. Her and Georgie’ll be the youngest ones in the whole bloody ward. And Georgie’s a fierce one for pissing on the floors. In I go to clean the toilet up and it’s slippery as all fuck.

* * *

Johnnie Logan’s going nuts over the mining boys. Says they should stay the hell out. But he’s all set, he is, with his Opel bloody Manta and his four-bedroom house and a seat on the County Council. Man like that doesn’t need a new job, unlike me and Barney. If he keeps those mining boys out it’ll be a good thump in the head from Barney, that’s for sure. And I’ll never vote for the bastard again. He used to be one hell of a boyo, getting that strike settled for the union and all, but like Barney says he’s barking up the wrong tree this time.

* * *

Ferocious bloody hangover this evening. Out on the piss in the Humbert with Barney in the broads of broad daylight. Smithwick’s. Nectar of the dogs, says Barney. And a fierce drink for the scuts.

Anyway, it’s all signed sealed and delivered, says Barney. The bank sold your woman’s caboose to the mining company. Off they are now doing speculations in the hills. There’s gold in dem dere hills, as the boys in the wild west say. Word around is that there might be jobs when the mining boys get their act together, which’d be a damnsight better than cleaning the bin, that’s for sure. Johnnie Logan’s bulling, but it serves him right, him and all the other greenies around. There’ll be a road up the mountain, no ifs, ands, or buts. They can all go to Kerry or Majorca or the south of bloody France if they want a bit of peace and quiet.

Went up there myself for a goo. Mining boys already put a big insignia on the side of the caboose. Picture of a mountain with the sun coming up over it. It’ll be a sunny bloody morning if they hire myself and Barney, that’s for sure. Those boys have money. You can be sure of that. We’ll be laughing and it might even bring a few of the lads home from Amsterdam or the Bronx or wherever the hell they’re gone. They put some barbed wire around the old carriage and already got themselves a few JCBs and a couple of churners, a pile of gravel and a big blue Dumpster. There’s no flower beds there any more, that’s for sure. Looks a bit different than it used to but that’s the way it goes. Jobs are jobs. There’ll be hell to pay if they don’t hire local lads, all the same.

Your woman must know about the caboose because she threw a nasty one tonight. Out they were doing all sorts of maneuvers to hold her down, the Heimlich and all that stuff. The only doctor on was that skinny bloke who stinks of garlic. Nurses had to call me out from the kitchen, where I was doing the scrubbing, to give them a hand. Six of us there including Barney, but he went a bit easier with her this evening. Dressing gown all over the place and she’s a good-looking woman, all the same. Barney asked me if I sprung a hard-on. He’s a filthy bastard sometimes. Anyway, out of her pockets comes tumbling a load of sachets of sugar that she must have stolen from the bowls in the dining area. Dozens of the damn things spilling all over the floor. In the little white packets. Maybe she has a sweet tooth.

Eventually calmed the hissy-fit though, the lot of us together. On with the gray gown, out with the shoelaces, give us that necklace, darling, and it’s off down to solitary with the soft white stuff on the walls. Don’t be banging your little brown curls around this time.

Must be awful hard all the same, losing the parents and the caboose like that. The nurses call her Ofeelia on account of the flowers in her hair. Can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her, even if Barney says it’s her own fault. Twenty years old and it’s not much better than the fucking slophouse.

Still no sign of the Georgie one. They must be doing all sorts of tests on her up beyond in the big smoke. Dymphna O’Connor got the thumbs up today and it’s off back to Kiltimagh for her. But the place was a fucking mess. There was a tampon shoved down the inside of the third stall and the rubber gloves had taken a hike. Mary Marshall at it again. They should teach that woman some manners. Barney told me a funny joke about Eve in the river but I can’t for the life of me remember it now. One of these days me and Barney are going to get new jobs. No doubt about it. We’ll be up there with the mining boys wearing three-piece suits and colorful ties and the doctors at the bin can lick the piss off the floors themselves.

* * *

Ofeelia was very quiet in solitary today. Often wondered why I never saw more of her around town, her being a fine thing and all. By all accounts, so say the nurses, her Da had a fierce battle with the board of education to keep her at home. Just imagine that. Didn’t even have a debs dance or anything. A bit like myself I suppose, since I only did the Inter and didn’t get a chance to dance with the old dickie bow on. Living in that caboose she probably never even had a chance to see any new films either. Christ. That’s not living.

The nurses were saying that her Da taught her the weirdest bloody stuff, him always up in arms about chemicals in the air and the peat bogs and all that other stuff they talk about. He was a friend of Logan’s and the greenies. Seems to me you have to be pretty bloody rich before you start talking about all that stuff. You can see them there on the TV, protesting the whales and the dolphins and all. There’s some graffiti in the women’s toilet that says NUKE THE GAY WHALES, which is pretty damn funny when you think about it.

* * *

She has the greenest eyes I ever saw. I’ll say that much for her. And quoting some strange bloody poetry too when she’s down there in solitary. All about these turtles and stuff. Doctor Garlic went to take her out today but she threw another nasty one. It was back into the white room for her, a shove in the back from Doctor G. That fella’s a screamer if ever I saw one. He shouldn’t be treating the patients like that, that’s all I have to say.

* * *

She’s a headcase, that one. Acting nice as could be for the last two days and back in the dorm, she is. Slopping out the stalls and who rolls in but herself. Oops, I say, it’s closed for a minute or two. Down she leans and, straight in the eyes, asks me if I could buy her a few bottles of syrup down at the shops, then slips me a fiver. Can I trust ya? she says, sounding normal as could be, even though they slapped a few of the yellow boys down her gob earlier on. Dressing gown hanging down awful low again. Barney would have had it right, but I never told him. Up she stands, with a bit of a wink and down the corridor until Dolores finds her and guides her back to the dorm by the elbow, awful gentle like.

So I bought the syrup, why not. Cost me an extra eighty-six pence. Went in, when they were all at dinner, and slipped the bottles under her bed. Didn’t say a word to Barney. He’d be slagging me something fierce. Took to calling me Hamlet for some reason when I said she wasn’t half-bad-looking. That bastard is always in the storeroom pulling his plum anyway.