Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

it was difficult watching all this on the television to feel any proper involvement in this drama, voices droning on while Mairead’s illness pervaded the house like a malignant mist, a psychic fog that seeped into my own being and blurred the margins of my body so that I was glad to hear Darragh’s voice that evening, Skyping me to ask

what’s the story with the water contamination, things seem to have ratcheted up a bit over the last few days

it hasn’t got any better, that’s true and

transporting water to the suburbs in bulk carriers, people queueing up with plastic containers like it was a third-world country

it doesn’t look good so

I gave him a swift account of what I knew, the ongoing investigation and the town hall politics and the military over-flights which so far had failed to identify the exact source of the contamination and the new filtration system which as yet was still on a drawing board in some engineering facility in Ottawa and the protests so

a city on the brink of civil insurrection, that’s what you’re saying — people marching in the streets calling for regime change, quarantine flags flying over City Hall, military over-flights and

not this shite with you as well Darragh, I said irritably, I’ve heard Agnes going on with this kind of nonsense and

Darragh held up his hand

woah, I agree, there’s nothing as tiresome as the apocalypse but take it from me, there’s something very worrying going on here

there is

yes

and what’s that

it’s City Hall and how they’re misunderstanding the people’s fear — you mark my words, as long as City Hall continues to interpret this as a simple matter of service disruption they will never understand why the populace have reacted with such vehemence since

it’s no big secret Darragh, people are fed up, this is another example of municipal incompetence and

it’s more than that

is it

yes, there’ll never be a shortage of administrative incompetence in that city and over the years the people have shown themselves to be more patient than most, but this is different, this is a disturbance of a different order entirely and

Darragh was leaning forward now, a close-up of his face filling the screen and even from the other side of the world I could feel the electric energy of his thinking, see it flaring in his eyes as he said

these people marching in the streets are protesting against what they see as a contamination of the very stuff of life itself — what angers them is that life itself has been fouled at source by some ontopolitical virus which is hosted by water so that

whoa — I have to stop you there, clean water in taps for tea and coffee and running gallons of it down the plughole when you’re washing your teeth — that’s what people understand and that’s what the city authorities understand it as also

I know that

so you should know better than using a word like ontopolitical with an engineer — much less a politician, you could hardly expect to make much headway with it in any of the debates that’ll decide how this pans out this because as sure as anything

Darragh’s face opened in a wide grin as he slumped back from the screen with a nod

yes, I got ahead of myself there for a moment — that thesis will have to be revisited if it is to have any traction in City Hall

yes, I would advise that

still though, it’s interesting to see people on the march, a city full of students and artists, they’re not often roused to protest like that, it’ll be interesting to see where it leads

it will

so long as it doesn’t turn out to be the smoking ban all over again

how do you mean

I remember the cigarette ban coming in and all the bitching and grousing people did about it — and you were louder than most — no one would tell you where to smoke because you came from a long line of men who smoked in the ancient way, the heroic way — standing at the bar with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other — the way your forefathers had done it, but the night the ban came in you and everyone else turned over like kittens and were out on the street smoking their fags in the rain so

you’re saying this could be all bluster

I don’t know, it would be great to think it’s the real thing but we’ll have to see, how’s mam

mam’s fine, she’s lying down now

there’s nothing wrong with her

no, of course not

I lied, without missing a beat, the decision to keep him in the dark apparently made within me without any conscious deliberation on my part because

it’s just that I haven’t heard from her in a while, it’s not like her

she’s very busy at the moment, mock exams and all that

give her my love, I’ll Skype her sometime later this week

ok, take care of yourself — and do me a favour

yes

don’t come online to her looking like that, shave and tidy yourself up or she’ll have a conniption

it’s a tough station dad, this Waltzing Matilda thing

so I see, look after yourself

will do — oh, one last thing

what

a joke

a joke

yeah, a great joke, you’ll like it

it’s two o’clock in the morning Darragh

this won’t take a minute — four men, a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer and a politician are discussing which of their trades was the oldest, and the lawyer starts by saying that surely it was his because right back at the dawn of mankind Cain killed Abel — the first murder — and that was surely followed by some sort of judicial process which obviously called for lawyers and therefore lawyering had to be the oldest profession but, the doctor shook his head and said that before Cain and Abel, God created Eve from Adam’s rib and this obviously involved some sort of surgery and post-operative care, all of which proved that medicine was the oldest trade but at this point the engineer stepped in and said you’re both wrong because right back at the dawn of creation there was nothing but chaos until God brought heaven and earth out of the chaos and this monumental act of creation was the first piece of engineering and what more proof did they need to see that engineering was the oldest of all the professions to which the politician, who had been listening quietly all this time, turned to the engineer, he asked if he understood him correctly — heaven and earth engineered out of chaos — to which the engineer said yes and which the politician in turn replied to by saying

who do you think made the chaos

and Darragh grinned

I thought it was a good one, you’d like it

it is good, I’ll try it out at work tomorrow, I’m going to say good night now, so take care

bye

bye

and the screen clouded to a fizzy interference before it blanked to darkness, the laptop closed on the desk with the room silent and my eyes with that scalded feel to them which would not be soothed away by anything but a couple of hours’ sleep so I did a final check on Mairead before going to our own bedroom and lying under the covers with my eyes closed for a long time, drifting in that black sea behind my eyes which spread into the darkness around me, bounded around by walls floors and ceilings, the house itself, which

like a child

I’ve always believed gets up to some foolishness during the night, whenever I fall asleep or turn my back on it, that’s when the ghost house beneath the paint and fittings asserts itself, flickering like an X-ray with that neurological twitch and spasm which is imbedded in the concrete, in the vertical and horizontal run of all its plumbing and wiring, those systems which make the house a living thing with all its walls and the floors pulsing with oil and water and electricity, all the pressures and imbalances in these systems pushing and drawing their freight towards that equilibrium which stabilises the structure in a warm balance, this web of utilities a tiny part of that greater circum-terrestrial grid of services which draws the world into community, pinching it up into villages, towns and cities so that