Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

Kearney sighed in deep contentment and put in his earphones. The hard-tech thump began battering his brain. Things could hardly be better. There was only one way to round off this perfect night flight …

Kearney took a deep breath and then stood up in the aisle. ‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ he roared, his confidence feeding on the belligerent surge of his own voice. He brought his blade down on the neck of the bald businessman sitting in front of him, delighted by the fount of blood that gushed forth, spraying the seats and window, painting Kearney’s T-shirt. With rising glee he heard the panic-screams of doomed families. He marked the faces stretched in terror as he walked calmly up the aisle, blowing the brains out of any motherfucker who might even consider trying to stop him. He screamed and shot a baby, not giving a fuck if a stray bullet punctured the plane’s side. Now he kicked down the door of the cockpit and cut the throat of the pale and whimpering pilot, and shot the co-pilot through the face, feeling the wank-spurt of hot blood on his gun-hand and wrist. He locked the cockpit door and, wearing a lusty slash of a grin, took the controls. Seeing the expanse of city lights come rushing beneath him, he pitched the plane forward to a fresh surge of screaming from the carriage behind. ‘ALLLAHH!’ he bellowed, and sent the plane missiling into the heart of Dublin city like a great bolt of holy fire. ‘AALLLAAHHH!’

It was on a Tuesday, two days after I got home from the weekend with Scag, that Rez didn’t kill himself.

I was downcast, irritable, still wading through the debris of that prolonged, wrecking bender. I stayed in my room in fading light, lying on my bed and looking at the ceiling, thinking about the abyss at the edge of the world. I was thinking about Scag, too, wondering if he was the kind of person I would become, years down the line. Of all the older people I knew, it was with the likes of Scag that I felt the clearest affinity. It was kind of scary.

Music had been playing but the album finished and I didn’t bother putting anything else on. The room was silent.

My ma walked in. I creaked my neck to look at her. I waited for her to say something. She just stood there, watching me. It struck me how vulnerable she looked, how small and frightened. These days I was having the recurrent insight that the adults around me were really still children, in grown-up bodies. They were not, as I had assumed, in possession of the answers about life, some kind of grand truth that everyone was gifted with on reaching a certain age. They were about as lost as I was, maybe more so.

‘What is it?’ I snapped, irritated by everything and wanting to be left alone.

She kept standing there, still far away. Then she said softly, ‘There’s bad news, Matthew. Rez has tried to kill himself.’

‘What?’

‘He’s okay, his brother found him, he’s alive.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘He’s in hospital. He’s okay, he’s fine.’

I had stumbled out of the bed, reaching pointlessly to put on my shoes. My ma was crying. It struck me that she believed I was distraught. And maybe there was a part of me that was. Mostly though, what I felt was excitement.

I wasn’t able to see him until the following day. I walked to the hospital with Cocker, bringing fruit and sweets from my ma, and a music magazine that I’d bought.

The corridors and wards of the hospital were painted in that dulled, turquoise colour that they always are, a tone with all the cheer drained from it, as if any vibrancy might aggravate the patients’ conditions. Rez was in a ward with two other men, a pale-blue curtain hanging down to screen him off from them. A single, square window let in dull sunlight, only heightening the depressed pallor of everything.

‘Heya Rez,’ we said, stepping into the ward. His mother was out in the waiting area, dry of tears, staring at the ground and rocking back and forth. She had gone outside so Rez’s friends could have a few moments with him. Maybe it would do him some good, the doctors had said.

He gazed at us for a few seconds, then muttered a hello. He didn’t smile. Why would he?

I cleared my throat. I had no idea what to say, how to act. Already this was excruciating. Cocker was dealing with it a little better, though. ‘Fuckin hell, man, what were ye up to?’ he said, sounding close to anger, as if he had been personally insulted, or judged, which was probably the truth. Maybe we had all been judged.

Rez seemed dazed by whatever medication they were pumping into him. His responses were delayed, like an internet phone call to a far-off country. He spoke in a throaty kind of drawl, which, I weirdly found myself imagining, would probably be seductive to girls.

Propped up by a wad of puffy white pillows, Rez shifted a bit on the bed, as if he wanted to kindle a flicker of life in himself. But all he said was, ‘What do yis want?’

‘What do we want? Fuckin hell, Rez, we came to see ye, that’s what we want,’ I said.

‘Really?’

I thought that because of all the sedatives, or something, he was being sincere. ‘Yeah, really. Jesus, Rez. Your ma is out there, destroyed she is. You’re killin her.’

While I was speaking, I began to grow uneasy; I had the feeling, as I did so often with Rez, that he could see right into me, and what he saw in there was next to nothing. Under his gaze I felt insubstantial, meagre. Everything I might have said would have sounded like a cliché, what you were supposed to say in these circumstances, devoid of feeling.

As if to confirm these notions, Rez looked right at me and said, ‘Matthew, do ye actually care?’

There was silence. Cocker turned to look at me, his brow all furrowed like an upset child’s.

‘Of course I care. What do ye mean do I care? Of course I care.’

A defensive edge had crept into my voice. As if sensing he had found a sore spot, Rez reared up further from his tranquillized torpor and struck again.

‘Are ye sure ye really care, or is it not that it excites ye? Cos that’s how I’d feel, if a mate of mine had tried to kill himself. I’d be dead excited about all the drama and glamour and all. A bit of serious reality. Is that not it?’

‘No! I …’

No more words came out. Cocker looked at the ground, his mouth open, brow still creased. He couldn’t handle this and neither could I.

‘I bet you couldn’t really give a fuck. You’re like a pack of fuckin hyenas, loomin over the bed. I bet yis can’t wait to tell all the lads about it. Piss off, would yis? Yis are nothin but a pack of hypocrites.’

I struggled to respond, stunned by his outburst. All I could manage was: ‘Jesus, Rez. I can’t believe this. We worry about ye, even if ye don’t believe it.’ I couldn’t meet his eyes. They were huge, a pair of moons in his skull.

Then he started roaring: ‘Piss off out of here, would yis! Such fuckin hypocrisy. Go on back home and don’t be so full of shit. Just get lost.’

‘Jesus, man.’

‘Piss off. I mean it. I don’t want yis in here. Fuck off and leave me alone.’

I’d never heard him like this before — the weird thought came to me that he was like the little girl in The Exorcist , possessed by the devil, growling obscenities at priests and women. But it wasn’t the devil, it was only Rez.

I resented his reaction and wanted to retaliate, but I couldn’t. It was out of bounds, laying into someone who was hospitalized after trying to kill himself.

‘Okay Rez, fair enough man, we’re goin. C’mon, Cocker. Sorry ye feel this way, Rez. Mind yourself.’

‘Off yis go,’ he sneered as we walked out the door. One of the men in the ward with Rez groaned. I didn’t see his face.