Colum McCann - Everything in This Country Must

She gave the boy a newspaper and he was surprised to remember that other people had lives too. An elderly woman had been killed by a soldier who thought the umbrella she carried was a rifle. A young father was shot coming out of a maternity ward. A tightrope walker from France had been set on fire as he tried to walk a rope between two housing estates in Derry — a Molotov cocktail had hit against his knee and he had continued walking as the flames rose high around him, dropping finally into the Foyle, his balance pole lost in the dark waters below him. On the streets, the rioting was worse than ever before: burning barricades, tear gas, rubber bullets, checkpoints.

There was still no news of a breakthrough, although some international committees were involved now too; everyone was clamoring for a solution, it had to come soon, it was inevitable.

His mother said she wondered sometimes if everyone had dropped small pieces of their sanity here and there, lost them so that the whole world had gone mad and things had fallen asunder.

How long was the longest hunger strike? he asked.

Sixty-something days.

And the shortest?

Oh, please, Kevin, let’s not talk anymore about it.

It was forty days or so, wasn’t it?

Just go to bed. Please, son. Please.

I’m just asking you.

And I’m just asking you, go on to bed, please.

He couldn’t sleep, rose from his bed at four, tiptoed across the caravan, stole eighteen pounds from his mother’s handbag, and went down to the town, avoiding the graveyard. The streets were quiet and eerie. The stars swung in their sockets above him. Bats harried the streetlamps. He fired stones at each of the three traffic lights in town and smashed the amber glass of one, found himself sprinting through the streets with imaginary policemen following.

Dawn broke over the mountains and light gnawed the town into shape.

He walked along the coast road until he managed to hitch a lift in a farmer’s pickup truck. He sat sullen in the seat as the farmer talked about silage. The farmer said that the price of silage was in serious danger of bringing the government of Ireland to its knees. Silage was an issue they couldn’t ignore. Silage was what would get them votes in this part of the world. The farmer had a deep smell of drink to him. He crunched through the gears. Once he put his hand on the boy’s knee and said that in the north silage was a proper issue, even the Unionists were up in arms about it.

The boy sat on the edge of the seat and kept his hand on the door handle, just in case, until he was dropped off in the city center.

Thanks, he said to the farmer, and under his breath he muttered: Ye humpy cunt.

The city was in full throat. Tour buses negotiated corners. Cars careened around him. Music belched from record shops. On telegraph poles there hung signs that said: SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKERS! and from a balcony on Dominick Street black flags fluttered. The boy punched his fist in the air. Girls wore very tight jeans and he could see their nipples through the cloth of their T-shirts. You’ve got your high beams on, he whispered. He bent himself over at the waist to calm his erection. Down along by an archway he sang a little to a stray dog.

I’m going to get screwed and you’re not.

Diddly-di-idle-day.

You’re a dog and I’m a man.

Diddly-di-idle-day.

At the bus station he bought a ticket and played video games until he heard the bus announced over the tannoy. He boarded with a swagger, still singing his song.

When the bus driver mentioned over the microphone about a connection to Derry City from Donegal, the boy punched his fist in the air once more and said: Brits Out, Me In.

Just half an hour into the trip two policemen boarded the bus. They told the driver they were looking for a dark-eyed runaway who has bought a ticket from Galway all the way to Northern Ireland. He slid down in the rear seat, but a policeman touched his shoulder, leaned down, and said his name aloud. He began to cry. Your mammy’s worried sick, they said. They were gentle as they guided him down along through the seats, other passengers staring at him.

He asked the police to turn on the squad card siren as they drove out from the city of Galway along the coast road, and they did, and he sat in the back seat, grinning, careful the policemen wouldn’t see him.

* * *

SHE STAYED HOME with him now in the evenings and she wrote songs in a notebook. He had taken a peek at the book and noticed that she had written his father’s name in curly letters with a love heart ringed around it, like a schoolgirl.

The songs were mostly about love and he noticed that she liked to use the word ocean a lot in the lyrics. An ocean of this and an ocean of that. Late each night the boy could hear her humming tunes to herself when she thought he was asleep.

He had promised her he would never run away again and so, toward the end of the week, she took the gig in the pub again. It was their only money, she told him, and she needed to be able to trust him. He swore once more that he would never leave no matter what. In the caravan he searched for stations on the radio, sang along to a few, got bored, found himself imagining beautiful women calling at the door. On his bed he masturbated and cleaned the mess up with tissues. He was careful that she wouldn’t notice the tissues in the rubbish bin. After a few days he began sneaking down to the town, stood on the rim of gray kegs at the back of the bar, watching her. She sang with her eyes closed and her lips very close to the microphone, holding the guitar close, her foot tapping in time to the songs. The small crowd seemed to sit under hats of cigarette smoke and the boy willed them to give her a longer, louder round of applause, to drop pound notes instead of coins into the tip jar.

At the end of the song called Carrickfergus, a young man blew his mother a kiss and the boy thought he should go into the bar and kick the fucker’s teeth in, but instead he turned around and snarled at an old Alsatian that was tied up at the back of the pub. It kept its muzzle flat to the ground and, when the boy threw a rock, it rose surly and mistrustful and loped away to the farthest end of its chain.

* * *

THE WEATHER BRIGHTENED and there were games on the beach. An odd bouquet of swimming togs and bikinis. Two women with skirts held high trod the low depths of the water as skeins of light caught the breaking waves. A small child threw a colored ball in the air. The ice-cream truck played its tinny tunes. The caps of swimmers bobbed on the sea and, farther out, an oil tanker seemed nailed down on the horizon.

His mother had bought him a pair of black shorts but he had refused them and now he felt the stickiness at the back of his trousers. He longed to take them off, but he stood with nonchalance at the rear of the beach while inwardly he cursed himself. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and noticed the line below which his arms were sunburned.

The sun climbed and shortened his shadow. He wondered if he threw himself down onto the sand would his shadow stand and watch him?

On the beach he saw the blond girl. She wore a red swimsuit this time and held a small radio to her ear. He watched her for half an hour, motionless in the sand, then he walked near the water. He was acutely conscious of his shoes and finally he took them off and strung them together, tucking his socks inside, and put them around his neck. The sand sucked his toes. The girl didn’t look up at him at all. She had a forearm shading her eyes and he thought that if he had money he would buy her some sunglasses. He would walk up and give them to her and then sit beside her. They would get bronzed in silence. Soon they would kiss.