Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

yes, those engineers have a case to answer, there should be continual monitoring of the supply but obviously someone slipped up, no doubt there will be an investigation and an analysis of the whole water system but the politicians

let me guess, the politicians will make sure the engineers take the blame for this

blame, responsibility, it’s all the same in a case like this, the important thing now is to find the cause and fix it before the whole thing escalates, there’s already over a hundred chronic cases and

I’m sorry to have missed it, five years living there and nothing this interesting ever happened so

it was obviously timed for your absence — how is the fruit picking going

not bad, shaking snakes out of trees and filling bags, long hours but the money is ok and there’s only a few more weeks of it left before we hit the road

so there’s a plan

it might be going too far to call it a plan but there’s talk of buying a second-hand van and taking it across country, Ayers Rock the whole lot, then leave it in Perth and fly back home so

how long will that take

we reckon we have enough funds to carry us for four to five months so I should be home in early August, just in time for the business end of the Championship

you won’t be missing much if you don’t make it, we will be well out of the running by then

Jesus, Dad, don’t put a hex on us this early in the year, the Championship doesn’t start for nearly two months yet

ahhh

you have to have faith, Dad, that’s what we Mayo people do, we journey in hope, true believers

martyrs more like, and your faith hasn’t taken as many blows as mine down the years

speaking of martyrs, Mam tells me that you’re hobbling a bit, some sort of a limp

it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a side effect of the Lipitor, it weakens the tendons in the heel

that’s very mythic altogether

it’s very painful whatever about mythic, I’ll probably have to get the dose changed or recalibrated or something like that

so long as it brings down the cholesterol

yes, that’s down to manageable levels now, three point two or something

and you’re staying away from chips and cake and all that sort of shit

yes, I’ve cut out all the dashboard dining

good, we want you around for another few years, by the way, and on another topic, did you make any headway with Kid A

I listened to it all right, I liked it — I think — it sounded a lot like unleaded King Crimson though, the same

Jesus, King Crimson, music for engineers, all those dissonant chords laid down at right angles to each other

exactly, my generation demanded more from our music than soft emoting and

you’re welcome to it — how is Mam, I haven’t spoken to her in a couple of days

Mam’s good, she’s gone to bed, it’s been a long week at school, she’s tired

ok so, give her my love

I will, take care of yourself, and one last thing

yeah

don’t be afraid to take out a razor and a comb once in a while

will do, bye

mind yourself

bye

and then he was gone, his hand reaching towards me, fingers extended from the other side of the globe as if to touch my face before he shut down the laptop in the flat he shared with five other lads somewhere on the outskirts of Brisbane, the connection broken now and that sense of immense distance closed down in an instant, the world nothing more than the four walls of the room within this house so that it took a moment to get used to the collapse of scale before I got up and walked out to the kitchen to find

something different about moving through the house today

a feeling of dislocation as if some imp had got in during the night and shifted things around just enough to disorientate me, tables, chairs and other stuff just marginally out of place by a centimetre or two, enough to throw me so that now, trying to make a cup of tea for myself, the last two minutes spent searching for the tea bags because the green canister in which they are usually kept is not where it normally sits on the worktop, tucked into the corner beside the boxes of herbal teas Mairead uses for her infusions, but

here it is, finally

stacked away on top of these plates in the cupboard over the sink, god knows why she put it there, why would she want to shift it, she knows full well how these small changes throw me, sending me rushing about the place, pulling stuff apart, never remembering where things are anyway — keys, wallet, phone, everything — can never leave a thing out of my hand without having to look for it, the same panic every morning — the hunt for my keys before leaving for work — turning out pockets and opening drawers, never remembering to put them where they can be found, just throwing them aside without a thought and then searching for them the following morning, a full ten or fifteen minutes wasted lifting newspapers and cushions and jackets until they turn up somewhere obvious, like on the hook over the holy-water font inside the front door, or the bowl on the hall table — who the hell put them there, why can’t people leave things alone — every morning this shambolic search through the house, that frustration which is very different to

the anxious feeling running through me now as

some twitchy voltage cutting across me so that it’s hard to focus properly on anything, my mind flocked with ideas as if it is filled with electric birds, always in flight, blue shivers which probably caused me to miss the fact that Mairead has laid out some food for me on the table and

looking at it now

looking at it now

a sandwich on a side plate, covered with a napkin and a glass of milk beside it, the whole thing standing there so complete in its own detailed neatness, so perfectly evocative of Mairead herself with all the attentiveness she brings to these little tasks, her capacity for joy in the proper completion of these small considerations so evident in the way it’s put together that it feels right to stand over it for a moment just to savour its appearance before lifting the napkin to see that the sandwich is good and simple — cheese with relish between slices of brown bread — a staple carried over from my childhood and which Mairead makes me from time to time as a small kindness, a gesture which touches me deeply at this moment, so much care and attention gathered to the separate parts of it but something inexplicably intense in me reaching towards it, my hand monumental and belated as if it had to pass across a cosmic realm, eons wide, glass and plate absolutely unreachable in a way that cannot be fathomed with all the time in the world to

remember when Agnes and Darragh were children

and it was part of their whole Christmas thing to leave food and drink on the kitchen table for Santa Claus and Rudolph, something to keep them fed on their big night’s work, usually cake or a sandwich and a carrot, and it was my job, before going to bed to eat some of it — or at very least to leave teeth marks in it — to show that Santa had indeed sampled our hospitality so that, the following morning, when they had got over the initial delight of their presents they would stand beside the table to examine the remains of the food and the whiskey glass lying sideways on the table because obviously, with a drop taken in so many houses along the way, Santa must have been well slewed by the time he got to our door and it was a wonder at all he managed to leave the right presents in the right houses and there was Agnes standing by the table in her pyjamas listening to me saying all this, weighing it up, while Darragh was already surging ahead, examining the carrot and cake but still not saying anything so that I began to wonder if I had slipped up somewhere in my story and given something away that would spoil the whole thing and I was about to open my mouth again but Mairead was looking at me from across the table, shaking her head, wearing that expression, both fearful and dismayed, which was telling me without words to