Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

‘What’s that supposed to mean? “I don’t know.” Can ye not even speak, is that the problem?’

My mother broke in: ‘Leave him, will ye. Jumpin down his throat like that isn’t goin to help anything, is it?’

‘You hang on a minute. I was speakin to him, let me speak to him before ye go defendin him when he’s not even answerin me properly!’

My mother had placed the lid of the pot at a slight tilt, so some of the heat escaped and it wouldn’t boil over, and now she sat back down at the table with us. ‘We’re just worried about ye, Matthew, that’s all,’ she said softly. ‘Ye always done well at school before. But now there’s this. A whole year of it and then this. What’s gone wrong with ye at all?’

I wanted to tell them that I was miserable and could they fix everything, like I was a child still. Instead I shook my head and looked intently at the surface of the table. ‘I’m alright,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind Landerton, I’m sure I did alright in the exams.’ I started wondering if I could get away with smoking a spliff out the window of my room, or whether I’d have to ‘go for a walk’ as usual, smoke it out in the cold and the rain, then skulk back in and up to my room to listen to music and fuck around with lava lamps. Or maybe they would go out tonight because it was a Friday and I’d be able to smoke my joints freely, rob some vodka or Bacardi from their press, and get out the porno.

‘Look at your sister,’ my ma was saying. ‘Never so much as a word from her teachers, unless they’re singin her praises. Why couldn’t ye have been more like her?’

I considered some nasty, sarcastic reply but I didn’t have it in me. I kept looking at the table and shrugged limply.

My da started up again.

‘Do ye not realize how lucky ye are? Ye don’t, do ye. Look at all the opportunities that are out there, waitin for ye. This country has never had more money in it than it has now. Jesus, we used to be hardly any better off than a Third World country, and I don’t even mean a long time ago. And now our economy is the envy of the bleedin world, and all you and your mates do is sit there mopin. I’ll fuckin tell ye now — I envy you , and everyone else your age. Ye can sneer all ye like, but this Celtic Tiger they’re talkin about, it’s no joke. Ye just don’t appreciate it cos ye don’t remember what it was like before, when we had sweet fuck all. Back when I was eighteen, nineteen, Jaysus, I’d have given me right arm to have what all youse have. But ye don’t lift a finger. Ye just can’t see it, can ye.’

He looked like he was going to say more, but instead he just scowled and shook his head. I looked hard at the table.

‘It’s true, Matthew,’ my ma said. I saw that she was nearly in tears and there was a feeling in me like a rising heat. But I hated them both.

‘What the hell are ye goin to do with yer life?’ my da said. ‘I’ll tell ye one thing, if ye really did make a balls of your Leavin Cert because ye were too busy dossin and feelin sorry for yourself, ye better not expect us to support ye. The way yer goin, ye might end up on the fuckin street. Have ye thought about that? I suppose ye’d expect someone else to sort it all out for ye if ye did. Just like me fuckin brother. What’ll ye do for the summer? Have ye started lookin for a job yet?’

I scowled and said, ‘I just did me last exam yesterday, how could I have had time to find a job?’

‘Well ye better get lookin for one soon enough, cos ye needn’t think ye’ll be mopin around here all summer long.’

‘What’ll ye do if ye don’t get into college?’ my ma said desperately.

‘I will get in,’ I said, still not looking them in the eyes.

My da sighed in exasperation and clattered up from his chair. He hissed and muttered as he banged out of the room.

‘Ye’ve just upset him,’ said my ma. I looked at the table for a moment longer. Then I opened my mouth and was about to say something. Instead, I shook my head, exhaled sharply through my nose, stood up and went to my room.

I rolled a spliff and then I went out for a walk.

Snapshot Number 2: Typical schoolday

The alarm goes off and Kearney opens his eyes. A phrase is resounding in his mind: Violence is my bread and butter . Only half lucid, still embroiled in slaughter dreams, Kearney nods his head in grim acquiescence.

He eats his breakfast and leaves the house. On the bus into school, still irritable, and queasy from the food, he slaughters everyone onboard. This is routine. His expression is cold as deep space as gunfire tears through the upper deck, blasting out windows, ripping children in half amidst howls of terror. As the day’s first visions of carnage stoke his mind into a semblance of alertness, Kearney exhales in relief. He needs this shit to make his bus journey interesting, to make it bearable.

At school he sits in class, more or less quietly, more or less obediently. Mr Landerton, then Maloney, then whoever, drones on about whatever the fuck it is — history, English, economics, Irish, biology — it all passes Kearney by while he stares at the back of the boy in front of him, or at the blackboard, lost to reveries of carnage and fucking. None of this shit is real for him; it is an alien world impinging on his reality, which is infinitely sexier. He perceives the offcial world through a kind of fog, dimly, and it nauseates him. He understands little of it and cares for less.

Just before the first break it starts to get too much. Kearney bites his lip and stabs his compass into the desk. He wants to fuck something, fuck anything. The equations on the blackboard mean so little to Kearney that he is overcome by a wild inner hilarity — what a wretched cosmos, what a hateful existence! He giggles until first the boys around him, then the entire class, are staring in astonishment. It is time, he thinks. Slowing his breathing, he closes his eyes for a moment; then he reaches down into his schoolbag for the two heavy, fully loaded handguns. Matthew, sitting innocently at his left-hand side, is the first to go. His brains, gore and bone shards spew a horizontal fount across the room. Then Kearney is on his feet, pumping round after round into the soft teenage flesh of his classmates: Kearney, the void at the centre of chaos.

And so on and so on.

On Saturday morning I went into town to meet Cocker and Jen. We met at the Central Bank, on the steps. The Goths were there as usual, a big gang of them, and the rockers in Slipknot hoodies and dyed hair. They were all the same. Some of the girls were nice, though. Most of the Goths had posh accents but they usually drank a lot. They smoked spliff as well, and probably even did other stuff, the kind of drugs that me and my friends didn’t know where to find. I knew a few of the Goths and rockers from school. I said hello when I saw Aido, who had this scraggly yellow hair in curls. He was into Death Metal. I didn’t like Death Metal at all. It made me want to die — too cold and hard.

Jen came last, getting off the bus from Blackrock. She smiled when she saw me and Cocker, stopping twenty yards away to wave at us with exaggerated emotion, like we were long-lost siblings reunited. I nodded at her, but sullenly. Cocker’s greeting was brighter. Jen had been with Cocker before. They had kissed one night when we were drinking cans down the banks of the skinny Dodder that flows through Tallaght like a fugitive sewer. She had been with Kearney as well, and Mick Mooney, and most of the lads I knew — everyone except me, basically. She had even been with the Cabbage. Mick Mooney said he’d shagged her and she had never confirmed or denied it; all the others said they’d fingered her, and Kearney said she’d given him a blowjob, though she did deny that. She said she’d only ever kissed Kearney, once while she was drunk. That was a good while ago; they didn’t seem to talk that much, Jen and Kearney.