Colum McCann - Fishing the Sloe-Black River

It flares out over the river, then almost seems to stop. The wheel appears suspended there in the air, caught by a fabulous lightness, the colors from along the quays whirling in its spin, collecting energy from the push of the sky, reeling outward, simultaneously serene and violent, a bird ready to burst into flight. For a moment, he thinks of marathons and jerseys, sprints and headbands, tracks and starting guns. Out there trundling through the traffic of Dublin in a wheelchair, racing along with others, maybe even delivering a package or two, parcels and letters that he can fit in his lap, a small paycheck, his father bending down to look at the money, bottles clanking. His younger brothers at some finishing line in colorful shirts, his mother fingering a string of red beads.

In an instant, the wheel turns sideways and falls. The walls of the Liffey curl up to gather it down to its belly as it slices the air with the economy of a stone. Fergus pins his upper body across the chair, leaning against the wall, but loses sight of the wheel about five feet above the water. He listens for the splash, but it is drowned out by the rumble of a truck coming along the road from the James’ Gate Brewery. Down below, on the surface, concentric circles fling themselves outward, reaching for the riverwalls in huge gestures, as if looking for something, galloping outward, the river itself shifting its circles for another moment, moving its whippled water along, all the time gathering the wheel downward to the river floor, slowly, deliberately, to where it will rest. Fergus tries to remember if the door of the fridge had been flung open as it cartwheeled down into the river all those years ago.

He places his hands on the wheels of the chair, grits his teeth, pushes forward along the riverwall, and rams down the quays, his overcoat flapping in the breeze.

It’s a sad Sunday when a man has to dig another swan from the soil. The radio crackles and brings Cathal news of the death as he lies in bed and pulls deep on a cigarette, then sighs.

Fourteen years to heaven, and the boy probably not even old enough to shave. Maybe a head of hair on him like a wheat field. Or eyes as blue as thrush eggs. Young, awkward, and gangly, with perhaps a Liverpool scarf tied around his mouth and his tongue flickering into the wool with a vast obscenity carved from the bottom of his stomach. A bottle of petrol in his hands and a rag from his mother’s kitchen lit in the top. His arms in the beginnings of a windmill hurl. Then a plastic bullet slamming his chest, all six inches of it hurtling against his lung at one hundred miles an hour. The bottle somersaulting from the boy’s fingers. Smashing on the street beneath his back. Thrush eggs broken and rows of wheat going up in flames. The street suddenly quiet and gray as other boys, too late, roll him around in puddles to put out the fire. A bus burning. A pigeon flapping over the rooftops of Derry with a crust of white bread in its mouth. A dirge of smoke breaking into song over the sounds of dustbin lids and keening sirens. And, later, a dozen other bouquets flung relentlessly down the street in memorial milk bottles.

Cathal coughs up a tribute of phlegm to the vision. Ah, but it’s a sad Sunday when a man has to go digging again and the lake almost full this year.

He reaches across his bedside table and flips off the radio, lurches out of the bed, a big farmer with a thick chest. The cigarette dangles from his lips. As he walks, naked, toward the window he rubs his balding scalp and imagines the gray street with the rain drifting down on roofs of corrugated iron. A crowd gathering together, faces twitching, angry. The boy still alive in his house of burnt skin. Maybe his lung collapsed and a nurse bent over him. A young mother, her face hysterical with mascara stains, flailing at the air with soapy fists, remembering a page of unfinished homework left on the kitchen table beside a vase of wilting marigolds. Or nasturtiums. Or daisies. Upstairs in his bedroom, a sewing needle with ink on the very tip, where the boy had been tattooing a four-letter word on his knuckles. Love or hate or fuck or hope. The sirens ripping along through the rain. The wheels crunching through glass.

Cathal shivers, pulls aside the tattered curtains and watches a drizzle of rain slant lazily through the morning air, onto the lake, where his swans drift. So many of them out there this year that if they lifted their wings in unison they would all collide together in the air, a barrage of white.

From the farmhouse window Cathal can usually see for miles — beyond the plowed black soil, the jade green fields, the rivulets of hills, the roll of forest, to the distant dun mountains. Today, because of the rain, he can just about make out the lake, which in itself is a miniature countryside — ringed with chestnut trees and brambles, banked ten feet high on the northern side, with another mound of dirt on the eastern side, where frogsong can often be heard. The lake is deep and clear, despite the seepage of manured water from the fields where his cattle graze. On the surface, the swans, with their heads looped low, negotiate the reeds and the waterlilies. The lake can’t be seen from the road, half a mile away, where traffic occasionally rumbles.

Cathal opens the window, sticks his head out, lets the cigarette drop, and watches it spiral and fizzle in the wet grass. He looks toward the lake once more.

“Good morning,” he shouts. “Have ye room for another?”

The swans drift on, like paper, while the shout comes back to him in a distant echo. He coughs again, spits out the window, closes it, walks to his rumpled bed, pulls on his underwear, a white open-necked shirt, a large pair of dirty overalls, and some wool socks. He trundles slowly along the landing, down the stairs to make his breakfast. All these young men and women dying, he thinks, as his socks slide on the wooden floor. Well, damn it all anyway.

* * *

And maybe the soldier who fired the riot gun was just a boy himself. Cathal’s bacon fizzles and pops and the kettle lets out a low whistle. Maybe all he wanted, as he saw the boy come forward with the Liverpool scarf wrapped around his mouth, was to be home. Then, as a firebomb whirled through the air, perhaps all the soldier thought of was a simple pint of Watney’s. Or a row of Tyneside tenements with a football to bang against the wall. Or to be fastened together with his girlfriend in some little Newcastle alleyway. Perhaps he was wishing that his hair could touch his shoulders, like it used to do. Or that, with the next month’s paycheck, he could buy some Afghan hash and sit in the barracks with his friends, blowing rings of Saturn smoke to the ceiling. Maybe his eyes were as deep and green as bottles in a cellar. Perhaps a Wilfred Owen book was tucked under his pillow to make meaning of the whistles on the barbed wire. But there he was, all quivery and trembling, in Londonderry, his shoulder throbbing with the kickback of the gun, looking up to the sky, watching a plume of smoke rise.

Cathal picks the bacon out of the sizzling grease with his fingers and cracks two eggs. He pours himself a cup of tea, coughs, and leaves another gob of phlegm in the sink. The weather has been ferocious this Christmas. Winds that sheer through a body, like a scythe through a scarecrow, have left him with a terrible cold. Not even the Bushmills that he drank last night could put a dent in his chest. What a terrible thought that. He rubs his chest. Bushmills and bullets.

Perhaps, he thinks, a picture of the soldier’s girlfriend hangs on the wall above the bunk bed in the barracks. Dogeared and a little yellow. Her hair all teased and a sultry smile on her face. Enough to make the soldier melt at the knees. Him having to call her, heartbroken, saying: “I didn’t mean it, luv. We were just trying to scatter the crowd.” Or maybe not. Maybe him with a face like a rat, eyes dark as bogholes, sitting in a pub, glorious in his black boots, being slapped and praised, him raising his glass for a toast, to say: “Did ya see that, lads? What a fucking shot, eh? Newcastle United 1, Liverpool 0.”