Colum McCann - Fishing the Sloe-Black River

She was humming the tune about a spoonful of sugar and the medicine going down when out hops the fucking security guard with his torch shining. Ofeelia stands stock still and I fall to the ground. He looks around a bit, lifts his right leg in the air, farts, and steps back into the caboose. I almost die laughing and Ofeelia she has a smile on her face to beat the band. Then she gets out the syrup, something I never heard about before, and dumps two bottles of the stuff in there. She tells me it’ll clog up the engine even if they get the wires fixed. That and the sugar will really do a number. The boys won’t move that dozer up the mountain for many a year, I tell her, but already she’s scrambling off to the other one. She drops the syrup bottle on the ground. Litterbug, I says and her still smiling.

Out she pops with a coathanger from the syrup bag, with the end all sharpened to a point, and she reaches right up into the engine with those small hands. It seems like all fucking night as she punctures something or other. She knows these fucking engines inside out. All this petrol starts pouring out and it gets all over her red dress. Damn, she’s soaked in the stuff. In her hair and everything. I get in there and drag her out and the stuff does a number on me too. Stinks to high heaven the petrol does and she’s doused in the stuff, but so what. We were getting the job done triple quick. Then it’s another number on the wires of the second JCB, my hands shaking like fucking mad. Christ, this is living, I think. Johnnie Logan and the greenies would love me. I should run for fucking Taoiseach after this. Out with the spoonful of sugar again. In the most delightful way, she says. Then some more syrup.

Up to the Bedford, which is open, so I pop the bonnet. Ofeelia she’s just standing there, smiling, looking up at the stars. But then there’s a clink at the caboose door and that bastard is out again, shining his bloody light, catching her in the beam and it’s all fucking hell let loose. Must have heard me messing with the Bedford. Out he steps, shining the fucker in Ofeelia’s eyes. I’m about to run but Ofeelia she’s stepping towards him and swinging her arms like a bloody windmill. It’s John O’Rourke who once slapped me around in school. She lands a good old thump on his jaw, but he gets Ofeelia by the hair and drags her down, shouting fucking bitch scraped me face. He’s in his vest and trousers. Some fucking security guard that.

I step over and clock him one with the hammer. Didn’t mean to do that and down he drops with blood on his face, oh Christ. I kneel down and he’s all right, just cut him to fuck over the eyebrow. I’m about to say I didn’t mean it Johnnie me boy, when he knees me one in the balls and kicks me in the head as I’m down. Times don’t change. Ofeelia she’s hanging off his back in the red dress and I’m half-out for the count. Next thing I know he’s scarping away, out over the fence and away. Ofeelia, she’s laughing and crying at the same time, and there’s a mad bitch if ever I saw one. They took my caboose, she’s saying, real real low, they took my caboose. The makeup around her eyes is streaked like mad. I go up and give her a hug and she gets to kissing my eyes, just like that. I sit down on the ground and just look around, and she kneels and keeps kissing. The red dress is brown as hell now. I see John O’Rourke’s torch shining away down the hill, lashing along through the bushes towards Martin’s place. The bastard’ll call the cops, I said, let’s skedaddle.

The door to the caboose was open though and Ofeelia was staring at it, standing there, stinking of petrol. Christ, I’m thinking, she’s off her rocker and beyond, Doctor Garlic should have kept her in solitary, and we’d all be grand now, scrubbing the toilet bowls and mopping the floors without a fucking care. Come on! I’m shouting, for Christ sake come on! It’s all right I’ll finish it now, she says. Just like that. On my own. Calm as can be. My hands are shaking like mad and I go to drag her by the dress but she’s awful quick and takes a sidestep. Please, she says, sad as can be, hair all over her face. Ah Christ, I think we were standing there for hours, her just looking at me. All right so, I say, don’t tell the cops it was me, that O’Rourke fella didn’t get a look at my face. She nods her head and turns to the caboose, closes the door awful gentle like and I take the hammer and sling it as far as I bloody can, but it bounces off the barbed-wire fence and jumps a bit on the ground. I look up at the sky and let out a big gullier at the stars.

Right so, I says to myself, and off I go towards the hole in the fence and my hands still shaking like mad. She can get out of this fucking mess herself. Out I crawl and just lash through the heather up the side of the hill. I don’t look back for the longest time, just run up there, blazing away like Eamon Coughlan himself. After a while I sit down, take myself a place on the hill, petrol stink on my hands, and look way down towards the town, where these red-and-blue sirens are blaring like fuck, coming out towards us. I squint my eyes and see Ofeelia through the front window of the caboose.

She’s just sitting there and smiling for some damn reason. Her hair is thrown back and the dress is ripped at the shoulder, but she’s just sitting there, watching. Bet the crazy bitch is driving that damn thing through the stars, I’m thinking. Up I stand and give her a big thumbs-up. Go on now girl, get yourself a speeding ticket! Give it an old handbrake turn! She just looks up at the huge sky up there and all the stars blazing away. I look up there too for a moment and think about all those times she might have been there with her old man, driving through the universe like fucking crazy, O’Ryan’s groin and all, that must have been a laugh.

I can hear the sound of the ocean and the wind going mad through the heather. There’s a million bloody stars out and I’m enjoying the view, but the sirens are getting closer. Better get the fuck out of here now, I’m thinking. Back and scrub the floors like bejesus. Those blue-and-red lights are flashing away down the road, along by the trees. Oh Christ she’s done for now. I look down and Ofeelia’s still sitting there, her eyes scrunched up, that smile on her face. But there’s not much they can do except throw her back in the bin, and I’m thinking that maybe every now and then, if things work out, we’ll get a chance to go for a walk in the garden. I give her the old thumbs-up again. How about you put her up on two bloody wheels Ofeelia! Screech her round the corner of Venus and leave some skidmarks for your Ma and Da, why not! See you soon and don’t be asking me for any more syrup!

* * *

There’s nothing I could have done anyway even when she sat there at the window and put that cigarette in her gob and lit it. By all accounts she had popped those yellow boys like they were going out of fashion while I was climbing the hill, so maybe she didn’t feel a thing, all doped up. That’s what the coroner said anyway. She must have had them with her in her pocket. But I don’t think I ever ran as fast in my life when I saw her take out those matches. Reached down into her pocket, looked at them, took one out, struck it and that was it. The guards say I was screaming her name. Cut myself to fuck on the barbed wire. Tripped once and slammed into the door. She had locked the fucker and by the time I pulled it open she was a ball of flames, sitting there, all that petrol from the JCB lit up like a bonfire.

She bummed that fucking cigarette off me and that’s something I’ll never forget. I once saw pictures of a monk doing the same thing, but I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Just licking away at the red dress, the flames were. And beginning to gather around her. Her stock-still in the middle of it all. Tried to roll her out but the flames got to me too, burning the shit out of my hands and the guards had to rip all my clothes off. Barney said that he heard I was crying, but I don’t take any truck with Barney any more. The bastard’s back working at the bin, and there’s no more JCBs for him, serves him right.