Colum McCann - Everything in This Country Must

There was a long silence between the three of them until the woman stood up and took the boy’s hand and examined the beginnings of the tattoo he had put on his forefinger. She said something quick and guttural in her language to her husband and then she touched the boy’s hair.

You shouldn’t do that, she said.

She looked at him strangely, and the old man nodded and tore at his bread with his teeth. The boy thought there must be a secret between them. She leaned back in her chair and her mind seemed to go elsewhere. The boy examined photos on the mantelpiece and watched the sweep of the pendulum in an ancient clock.

A high hard feeling of emptiness hit his stomach and he put his teacup down on the table and asked to be excused. The old woman rose and escorted him to the door, took his hand, ran her finger over the unfinished tattoo, and leaned toward him.

Your uncle I heard about, she said. I hope everything will be okay.

Thanks.

When you get older, she said, you will learn that pain is not much of a surprise. Do you understand?

I do, aye.

He turned away slightly and she kissed him high on the side of his head.

You’re a good boy, she said.

He felt frightened as he ran down the pathway past roses in bloom, and when he was far away from the house he rubbed at the place where she had kissed him. He thought it was as if he were both inside and outside their happiness, as if he could step back and forth between them, liking and hating them in equal amounts, a paddle hitting either side of the water.

He spent the day walking through the town, and at the newsstand he stole a paper that was full of news articles but no mention of his uncle’s name. There was an editorial that said the hunger strike was the equivalent of a freezing man lighting fire to himself for warmth, and he tried to understand this but he couldn’t, so he torched the paper by the rear wall of the handball alley and scrunched his toes into the embers.

* * *

THE RIOTS BACK HOME were full-scale now. Some prison guards had been shot. Two joyriders had been gunned down in Twinbrook. A young girl, bringing home milk, had been hit in the head with a rubber bullet and she was in a coma. Somebody had slit the throats of a whole herd of cattle because they belonged to a Catholic farmer and the herd had been strung together to make the word NO in the field. He tried to imagine it, the dead cattle, end to end, their tails in the blood of another one’s throat.

He began thinking of it all as some chess game and he was at the front of it, a small piece moving, heading toward the end of the board, which could have been a pier or a cliff face or any other part of the town.

The back seam of his left shoe was split now, and when he moved it opened and closed rhythmically. In the abandoned car above the cove he thought about kicking in the last window but lay down instead on the back seat and put his head against the door frame, woke startled to see a stray horse staring in at him. The nostrils of the horse flared and then it shook its head, neighed, and galloped away. The boy was sure he had seen his uncle’s spirit and he ran back along the headland and burst breathlessly into the caravan. The door banged loudly. The radio was on. His mother looked up from where she was writing songs in her notebook and simply shook her head, no.

* * *

IN THE MORNING she was at the table, her legs drawn up on the chair. She had made pancakes for him. He noticed that her eyes were puffy and she looked older than ever before. She had not dyed her hair for two months and there were a couple of stray pieces of gray at her temple. She was staring down out the caravan window.

It’ll be okay, Mammy, he said.

She looked up at him and smiled.

It’ll all work out, he said.

Pardon me?

Don’t you worry, Mammy.

She said he was sounding more and more like his father these days and he even had the same cheeky tone of voice.

Oh, he used to do the silliest things, she said. He once stood on his head and drank a full bottle of Coke. And another time he made a lopsided table that he liked to read at, can you imagine that? All the legs were different lengths, and depending where you put the pressure it would move up and down like a boat on the sea.

Why?

For devilment, she said. He was a real joker. He used to play all sorts of tricks. He put glue on a wooden spoon one day and I couldn’t shake it off my hand; he found it hilarious.

I’m not a joker though.

Aye, but you’re a funny wee lad.

You said wee!

I did, aye.

They sat at the table, both of them cutting up the pancakes into smaller and smaller pieces.

Oh, your poor grandmother, she said suddenly, your poor, poor grandmother.

The boy had no idea what he should say. To make her happy he poured some syrup on the pancakes and ate them with as much relish as he possibly could. The syrup tasted exceedingly sweet and he washed it down with quick mouthfuls of tea. For a moment he felt he might vomit.

His mother drew her legs up into her chest so her chin rested on her kneecap.

What’ll we do today? she asked.

We could hitch a lift and go shopping in Galway, he said.

We could.

Or maybe we could go for a swim.

That’s a great idea, she said. That’s the best idea you ever had in your life.

She dragged him up from the chair by his hand, stuffed their swimsuits and a couple of towels in a white plastic bag. She pushed open the door of the caravan and instead of going toward the town she went east along the headland, past the abandoned Vauxhall, bounding over a series of boulders. She held his hand and laughed and when they got near the shoreline she hunkered down behind a giant rock and switched into her black swimsuit. Her skin was pale as candle wax against it.

Last in’s a rotten egg, she shouted as she stepped gingerly over the rocks into the water.

The waves came up to her and broke at the waist and it seemed to him like the opening of hands. She waded out until the water was above her breasts and she dipped beneath the surface. She came up twenty yards away and waved at him.

He hid behind a different rock and pulled on his trunks. She was already churning a line out on the water when he followed her into the widening vee of her wake. He was a quicker swimmer than she and soon he caught up and swam past her. She treaded water and splashed him. He began splashing back, and soon they were both laughing.

He ducked underwater and swam in the salty darkness away from her. He looked on the water for the kayak but it was nowhere in sight.

They swam for fifteen minutes and then they walked back up the hillside together, chatting about a song she was writing about seagulls and the way they dipped for food. She hummed a little of it and asked him what he thought of the melody and he said it was wonderful. She explained she was going to dedicate the song to his uncle and the boy put his arm around his mother’s shoulders. He felt his fingers grip the top of her shoulder. She bent her head sideways and leaned on him.

You’re getting fierce big, she said.

He helped her up the hillside and as they walked he thought to himself that his childhood had all of a sudden fallen away, that he had dropped it like a skin in the sea.

* * *

HE CHALLENGED HER to a game, the rules being that they had to eat each piece when it was taken. In seven moves he deliberately lost his queen. He went to the fridge and took out the butter and a pot of strawberry jam. He pasted some onto the chess piece for her and this time, when she said it was delicious, he didn’t get angry, and they sat there until all the pieces were eaten, except for the kings and her pawn.