Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

I had no energy these days. At work I just got stoned and spoke to no one, sluggishly washing cars and filling tanks, coming to life only when my manager gave out to me. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d fired me. When I wasn’t working, I hardly left my room unless I was going to get wasted with Kearney or Cocker. I hadn’t heard anything from Jen. I thought about calling her; maybe we could patch things up and make it like it was before, at the start of the summer. I missed her. But then I would remember what had happened and tell myself that she could be dead for all I cared. Because of what my ma had started referring to as ‘the Richard situation’ I was left alone, not hassled about anything. That was a relief.

Then Rez got out of hospital. He’d been in there ten days. His ma said maybe it was best that his friends gave him some space for a little while, till things were back to normal.

He kept to himself after meeting Matthew at the industrial estate. Now that the intention was there — the intention to kill somebody — he found that his mind was whirring away below decks, doing the creative work while he played Grand Theft Auto or smoked on his bed. Ideas would pop into his mind at random moments. For instance, there was the thought that he could push some old fucker down the stairs. Or he could leave the gas on in his grandmother’s house, causing a tragic accident that was no accident at all. Or he could go all out and accost someone on the street, or down a dark lane, and bludgeon them to death. When he thought of that one in particular his mind whirled and he experienced a great dizziness, akin to vertigo: there was no limit to what he might achieve if he put his mind to it.

But the idea of bludgeoning, stabbing or beating someone to death, though thrilling, seemed too far-fetched, too outrageous. He would end up getting caught and having to go to Mountjoy for the rest of his life. No fucking way.

When the idea appeared, he knew straight off that it was the right one.

He told no one about his plan. He brooded on it for two days, getting the details just right. Then he awoke on a midweek morning and he knew: it was time to climax.

When his ma had gone out to work — she was a cleaner, Monday to Friday, nine to five, much to Kearney’s inner derision — Kearney lifted open the portal in the garage and climbed down the sturdy wooden ladder into the basement. He was wearing rubber gloves. He stuffed what he needed into a Dunnes Stores bag inside a SuperValu bag, and left the house.

He took a bus into town, on his own. He sat on the top deck and looked at no one.

He had a victim in mind. And if he wasn’t there, that was no matter; Kearney would transfer his intentions to another of his preferred victim’s mangy, stinking kind. They were all the same, all as worthless as one another. Fuck the lot of them.

Kearney got off the bus at the Central Bank. He stepped off Dame Street and down the cobblestoned laneway that sloped through Temple Bar towards the Liffey — a run-off sewer of vomit, fast-food cartons and half-digested burgers.

And there he was, the pitiful cunt, slouched in his usual place, all on his own. There he was, where he always was.

The tramp sat in the shadowy staff doorway of the Hot Chick takeaway, wheezing and splayed like he’d been stabbed, only he sucked on a can of cheap cider every few seconds, ruining the effect. Kearney approached the tramp and stood above him, looking down and feeling like the Angel of Death. He took in the tramp’s grey, matted hair that spilled out under an ancient baseball cap with Remember the Alamo printed across it, and the shitty grey crust of clothing that swaddled him. Kearney’s lip twitched in revulsion.

‘There’s a smell of piss here,’ he said coldly, his eyes on the tramp.

He imagined a camera filming him, someone looking on.

The tramp mumbled something and continued to stare vacantly, vagrantly ahead, at the opposite wall of the laneway. He slurped again on his can, either unaware of Kearney, or just not giving a fuck that he was there, looming above him.

Kearney sniffed, leaning in a little over the tramp and his dank, stinking doorway.

‘Fuckin hell man, that really reeks. Does it not bother ye, sittin there in the filth like that? Do ye just not give a fuck, like?’

The tramp mumbled again. This time Kearney discerned the words ‘cunt’ and ‘fuckers’, fishing them out of the slur of babble like boots or soiled condoms in the drift of a filthy river. He grinned.

‘Ah, it can’t be that bad, pal. Shift up a bit there and let me sit down. If ye don’t mind, like.’

The tramp didn’t respond, so Kearney gave him a hard shove with the toe of his boot, almost a kick. ‘Get up, would ye. Jaysus Christ.’

Finally the tramp lurched into a greater awareness of Kearney. He looked up at him in glazed perplexity, like someone who’d just woken up.

‘What do ye fuckin want?’ he rasped.

‘Nothin. Move up a bit and let me sit down.’

‘Ye little faggot …’ The tramp began to mumble a string of insults at Kearney, but then cut himself short. Dimly scenting opportunity, he said, ‘Gis a smoke.’

‘What?’

‘Gis a smoke, I said.’

‘What do you say?’

‘I say give us a fuckin smoke. Or FUCK OFF!’

The tramp tried to swipe at Kearney with his can-hand, but succeeded only in spilling cider over his chapped yellow fingers and wrists.

Kearney laughed, but pulled his pack of twenty John Player Blue from a back pocket and opened it. ‘There ye go. Have two. Now let us sit down.’ He nudged the tramp again with his foot and squeezed into the doorway beside him. He put his faded green knapsack resting between his knees. He lit the tramp’s smoke, then lit one of his own. He said, ‘I just thought I’d have a bit of a drink.’

The tramp’s sullen contemptuousness gave way to fascination as Kearney pulled a can of Oranjeboom lager from the knapsack. Kearney cracked open the can and glugged down a quarter of it, then exhaled loud and slow in theatrical satisfaction. He passed the can to the tramp and said, ‘Have a sup, go on.’ But he needn’t have bothered, for the tramp had already tipped the can back and was pouring the drink down his throat. Kearney tingled in loathing as foamy yellow lager spilled over the thicket of filthy beard that clung to the tramp’s flaking face.

The tramp emptied the can, belched in a way that surely signalled grave inner disarray, and flung the can at the opposite wall, where it clanked and fell to the ground, rolling to a stop against an overturned burger carton and a crushed Pepsi cup.

‘Do ye want me to say thanks?’ hissed the tramp, energized by the sudden inpour, all drunk down hastier than his usual rationing would allow for.

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Kearney.

‘FUCK OFF!’ barked the tramp. ‘That’s what I say to ye. Go and shite. Or else gis another can, ye little fuckin prick.’

Kearney laughed, highly amused.

‘Jesus Christ, ye don’t really have what ye’d call the social graces, do ye? And ye can’t have much of a clue about actin in yer own best interests, cos ye can see that I’ve got loads more cans here, and I’m probably willin to share them. But then ye go and insult me! To be honest with ye, I’m amazed that ye’ve reached the level of achievement in life that ye obviously have done, with that kind of attitude.’

Kearney chortled again, this time at his own cutting irony. He pictured the TV audiences, sitting at home and chuckling in sophisticated appreciation of his pitch-black wit. The tramp merely grunted, his zest for insult already spent.

‘However, I’m the mellow sort,’ continued Kearney. ‘And I don’t like drinkin on me own. So I’ll stay with ye for a while. Only if ye don’t mind, though.’ He raised his hands and put on a look like he was worried about offending the tramp. ‘Seriously, will I stay and have a drink with ye? I’ve plenty here. Or will I leave ye alone? Tell me seriously, like. I don’t mind which, but ye have to tell me.’