Colin Barrett - Young Skins - Stories

His measly eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks puce. Ignoring the girl, he wheeled Arm away from the light of the bar and into a corner.

‘Douglas, tell me now. Can we trust them?’

Arm looked over his shoulder. The rider was talking to the girls. She said something and popped her eyebrows, prompting a giggle from the natives.

‘Hector, Paudi,’ Dympna said.

‘They supply,’ Arm said, ‘if we don’t have them we don’t have nothing.’

‘They won’t let this Fannigan thing drop.’

‘You think they’ll carry through on it?’ Arm said.

‘I think they will. I think they’ll lift him from the street and take him out there and feed him to their dogs. I think they don’t give a fuck about anything after that, the shit storm that’ll follow. They don’t believe in the guards, jail, not really. Fuck, they barely believe in this town. They live out in the fucking wilds with the stones and the dogs and their guns and they think that’s all there really is.’

Arm looked to the bar, but the girls were drifting away through the crowd. The rider did not look back, but there was something in her carriage, in the alignment of her neck and shoulder blades, that suggested she knew she was being watched go.

The night went on. The band churned out an hour of stuff to increasing indifference and relieved cheering when they finished and the DJ took over. The young ones flocked to the floor. Arm watched them, a tribe of women stamping and twisting, and he wondered; where are all the fellas?

‘Good night anyway,’ Dympna said, ‘and fuck the rest of it.’

Dympna’s eyes were wobbling in their sockets. Arm felt nicely dented too. Arm patted Dympna’s shoulder and stepped out onto the dance floor. Spumes of dry ice rolled between the commingling bodies. Arm turned and knew she’d be there. The rider, bobbing in place behind her two mates, both of whom were wrapped round fellas. She smiled at him, flicked the brows in a way Arm figured for consent. Arm smiled and leaned in. Got a taste of the lips before she drew back and her hand was up on his throat.

‘What the fuck,’ she mouthed at him over the music.

Arm shrugged and hung his head at a contrite angle, then stooped in again. She took another step back and at least smiled ruefully this time. ‘Nooo,’ she mouthed, and shook her head like Arm was an idiot.

Arm pointed to the smoking area, meaning let’s go talk, then.

‘Not tonight,’ she shouted, grinning again and giving him a pitying squeeze on the arm before stepping off.

Arm watched her go. He thought, that’s another story.

Arm left Quillinan’s near two, and figured a walk would help wick away the worst of the hangover that was bearing down on his tomorrow. He started for the outskirts of town, out along the quay road. The road stuck more or less parallel to the path that the Mule River cut towards the coast a couple of miles farther on. Arm’s intention was to get as far as the strand a mile out then loop back around, a nice three-quarter hour jaunt. Arm had his music in as he walked. After a while he saw a body ahead of him. Arm slowed his tread, recognising the sedimentary rinse of silver through the hair, the scarecrow elbows and bandy-legged lope. Fannigan, like Arm, was taking the scenic route home from whatever establishment he’d elected to get hammered in.

Arm popped out the headphones and stowed the buds inside his jacket, where they continued to palpitate against his chest. Eyes on the back of Fannigan’s head, he sped up, taking care to dampen his footfall. Fannigan was oblivious as Arm glided right into step beside him.

‘Well, soldier,’ Arm said.

Fannigan jumped, his entire frame bouncing like a rubber band. He stifled a cry and swung his gaze towards the river, twenty feet below. After a moment, his eyes dragged themselves back around to Arm, as they had to.

‘Jesus, Douglas lad, how are you?’ Fannigan croaked with as much composure as he could muster. He had matching black eyes, the sockets pulped and swollen, a band of ragged cotton dressing tacked over his nose.

Arm threw an arm across Fannigan’s shoulders and steered him into the riverside wall. Fannigan mumbled, ‘What—’ right as Arm flipped him. He went headfirst, spinning, sliding over mud, grass and stones. Arm looked both ways — no body or car in eyeshot — and hopped the wall. Quickly he slipped his sneakers from his feet and jammed them beneath a rock. Fannigan just lay there and watched, marsupial eyes blinking out of the dark; it did not occur to him to pick himself up and scramble, to try to run away.

‘Up,’ Arm said.

Arm could practically hear the laggard cranking of the sot’s brain as it tried to process what was happening. Obediently Fannigan got to his feet and began to pat himself down, which only succeeded in dabbling the wet muck farther across his clothes. He was wearing a black Celtic rainjacket with luminous green trim, a sweatshirt, jeans and buckled boots.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Move,’ Arm said.

‘What?’ Fannigan said.

Arm rapped him on the forehead like knocking on a door and repeated his request.

‘Turn. Downstream.’ Arm jabbed Fannigan between his shoulder blades until he commenced moving. ‘The uncles got wind. I hope you knew they always would.’

Arm watched Fannigan’s shoulders go rigid then slacken. Fannigan shook his head, glanced back at Arm.

‘You are not them,’ he said.

‘What?’

Fannigan’s whiskers twitched.

‘You are not them.’

‘Keep going,’ Arm said.

They walked, Arm following Fannigan in silence, until he decided they were far enough along. He put his hand on Fannigan’s shoulder. The Mule was at its widest point here, maybe fifty feet across, and the noise of the current had become industrially loud.

‘Jacket,’ Arm shouted. Fannigan turned around, took it off and handed it over. Arm balled it and threw it onto the water. It hit the surface and in an instant was snatched away, shedding a curl of froth as it was ferried along for a few moments before sinking into the black.

‘Take off the boots, the rest of your clothes.’

‘What?’

He was beginning to get a grasp of the situation. Arm had invoked the uncles; Fannigan knew what that meant. The uncles, Dympna was right, Arm knew, they’d butcher Fannigan. They’d use him for sport, and take their time doing so. They’d feed his bones to their curs, and sooner or later decide that Dympna’s show of leniency had demonstrated a dangerous weakness at this end of the operation.

Fannigan took his time undressing. The boots he worked off first, then he drew up and off the sweatshirt and the vest beneath.

‘Leave them there,’ Arm said, toeing a spot in the dirt. Fannigan dropped the shirt and vest, and was soon shivering in a way Arm found hard to watch. Fannigan’s torso was pale as milk, his chest hair a scutty fuzz petering down to his navel. His tattoos, in the dark, looked like bruises on his arms.

‘Dympna. .’ he said, ‘Dympna said this,’ he touched his bandaged face, ‘Dympna said this was the end of it.’

‘Trousers, c’mon,’ Arm said.

‘Is this happening?’ Fannigan said as he stepped out of his pants. ‘Oh Christ, I’m naked,’ he muttered, ‘I’m in the fucking nip.’

Fannigan began to fold his trousers, lining up the legs, then halving and halving them again, until it was a neat, bundled parcel of denim. This small civilised feat accomplished, he began to shake his head.

‘No, No, No. This joke’s over. I’m not putting up with this. Fuck this!’ Fannigan motioned to move past Arm but it was a cursory effort. Arm rested the heel of his hand on Fannigan’s collarbone.

‘Nearly, it’s over,’ Arm assured him.