Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

Sluggish with drugs, Rez’s thoughts were entangled in the weird insinuations of the televized launch. Matthew’s puzzling behaviour receded from consciousness.

And then Matthew was standing up, saying he had better get going, telling Rez to take care. Rez nodded like a businessman, forgetting briefly the exact nature and purpose of Matthew’s visit.

Then Matthew left and Rez turned again to gaze into the lively colour-dance of telly.

Telly, he noted, is really great.

He kept a close check: there was still nothing in the papers about a dead junkie or dead winos. Or next to nothing: there were two short reports of a ‘bad batch’ of heroin that was going around, one in the Herald and one in the Independent , but neither of them mentioned any slaughtered humans.

You needed to see it happen, thought Kearney. You needed to be there at the precise instant when the body passed from life to death — like in Stu’s video. He felt like telling Dwayne what he had done, but it was too risky. Instead, he emailed him about the video: ‘ i jus keep thinkin of it over and over i never seen anyting like it hehe fuckin MENTAL. moddern art!! but hush hush cos we be fucked if anyone ever fund out we seen sumting like dat .’

The next day, Dwayne replied: ‘ wot de fuck u talkin about joe?? u mean dat porno with yer fiwho looked like cristina agillerra? r de video wit all de yungfellas tormentin de homeless lad? dat shit is wide spred over here nigga. y wud we b in trubble for watchin dat? wot de fuck u on about joe??? ’

Kearney was puzzled and unnerved by this response. What the fuck did it mean? Thinking it over, he found he was starting to get a headache. Better, then, not to think of it at all. He smoked a big fuck-off cone and that helped. Dwayne was a dickhead. All Kearney wanted now was to go back into town and fucking decimate another random cunt. But he knew it was best to cool off for a while. The buzz he was on reminded Kearney of what Dwayne had said once about tattoos: as soon as you get one, all you can think about is the next. You want one that’s bigger, brasher, bloodier, and there’s no end to it till your body is a mass of pouting sluts, flaming swastikas and blackened landscapes. With effort, Kearney suppressed the impulse to find some other wheezing alco, maybe gouge out his eye or break all his fingers, or pull his tongue out with a pliers. He had to be clever, treat it like a game and not lose control. Otherwise he’d be fucked, end up in Mountjoy.

He holed up in his room for a few days, getting stoned and investigating the online world of hentai, a new Japanese fascination of his. When he ran out of hash on Friday morning, he decided to pay a visit to Mick, a dealer he knew through Dwayne. There was a drought on, but Mick always had his sources. Kearney had enough money for a quarter that would last him a few days, a period in which he intended to stay home, till he felt confident about taking the next step.

He got on a bus and headed into town. It was another grey and sullen morning. No one was around; it was as if the city had been evacuated. Mick’s flat was on Parnell Street, down where town starts feeling dodgy and faintly lawless. Kearney rang the bell, waited to be buzzed through, then ascended the stairs. He sat quietly while Mick took his time rolling a spliff and telling supposedly funny anecdotes to three older lads, who laughed obsequiously. Slow, spacey reggae played on massive, bass-heavy speakers stacked on a chest of drawers. ‘Dub’, Mick called it. Kearney pretended to like it, impatient to get the dope and leave.

After twenty minutes of dub and forced laughter, Kearney left with the hash. Instead of going straight home, he walked to the Garden of Remembrance to roll a spliff. He wanted to be nice and stoned on the bus journey home, before spending the rest of the day in his attic, getting blitzed out of it. He sat down on a bench, noticing that the place was nearly empty, and took out his book, Naked Lunch . He had never read it, and never intended to. Reading, clearly, was for faggots. The book had belonged to Rez until Kearney borrowed it one day — not to read, but to roll joints on in public places. It worked brilliantly. Rez was never getting his book back.

He had rolled the spliff and started smoking it when the boy appeared. Kearney watched him entering the garden through the main gates. Even at a distance, he had no trouble discerning it: the boy was handicapped, your classic Down’s-syndrome pre-adolescent. His big, round, baby face was stupid and trusting — stupid and trusting and weak. He wore some kind of uniform, a dark-green affair with a yellow and grey striped tie. He was alone. That surprised Kearney; he had thought they never let them out on their own.

Down the steps the boy waddled. At the opposite end from the gate stood the swan statue, and between them was the long central fountain with Celtic weapons painted on the tiled floor.

Kearney kept his eyes on the handicapped boy who misted through the cloud of hash smoke Kearney billowed from his nostrils, a technique he had styled on Snoop Dogg. The boy reached the foot of the steps and came shuffling around the right-hand side of the fountain, approaching the bench where Kearney was sitting.

Kearney had been watching without any agenda in mind, but now, with the boy right beside him, instinct took over: he darted a quick glance up and down the length of the garden. There was nobody around. Kearney thrust out his long, scrawny leg and adroitly tripped the boy up. He fell forward, landing on his face and palms with a groan of incomprehension and pain.

Kearney was up and on his feet immediately. ‘Jesus, man, I’m sorry!’

‘Uuggh,’ said the boy.

Kearney helped him to his feet, brushed him off, made sympathetic noises until the boy was upright and recomposed. He had no plan, no clear idea of what he was doing, what he would do.

‘Jesus, I’m sorry about that, pal. I should keep me long legs to meself. Are ye alright?’

‘Am alright. You tripped me,’ said the boy in a predictable drawl.

‘I know, I know. Come on now, I’ll walk ye out. Yer on yer way home, I suppose.’

‘I have to get home to me mammy, she says don’t talk to strangers. They might be sex perverts.’

‘I’m not a stranger. I know yer mammy. She’s far more of a sex pervert than I am.’

The boy flung Kearney’s arm aside with surprising force.

‘Don’t say that! She’s a good mammy, she’s my mammy, she’s not a sex pervert!’

‘I know, I know! I was only jokin. Come on, ye mad thing ye.’

Kearney lightly took the boy’s arm again and led him along the length of the rectangular, enclosed garden. They came to the steeper, narrower steps, leading up to the side entrance.

‘This my shortcut,’ said the boy.

‘That’s right. Up we go,’ said Kearney reassuringly.

They began the ascent, the steps partly hidden by the overhanging branches of the trees around the periphery of the garden. Still Kearney had no thought of where this was leading. But his heart was going like fuck.

When they were almost at the top, near the black iron gate and Parnell Square beyond, Kearney looked back. The garden was still almost empty but a middle-aged, tourist-looking couple had just stepped through the front gateway, absorbed in chat, the man emphasizing a point with open-handed gestures. They were far away.

Kearney didn’t hesitate, nor did he think about what he was doing. He shot his leg in behind the boy’s calves, then turned and simultaneously gave him a forceful shove. Arms swimming in the air, clawing at nothing, the boy fell slowly backwards like a felled tree. Incomprehension stole over his face, his chubby brow creasing in fright and bewilderment. Weakness! thought Kearney. Weakness! The boy free-fell in an inexorable arc. He just had time to cry out, and then the back of his head cracked on the sharp edge of the lowest step.