Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

Damn, he thought. Damn! Damn!

He was staring at a spent dark-green cartridge on the floor, the remains of a pellet. And beyond the cartridge was the gun. Yes, he said, collecting himself, slinking towards the weapon. His only responsibility now was to himself. He had a duty to make it safely to an airport. He would bring the gun with him, dump it in a bush as close as possible to the airport, and make it to an aeroplane.

He stood up, over the gun, bent down to pick it up, and then — BOOM!

He spun around. Two pistols were pointed at him, easing into the room, and behind them two police officers. Between the police officers was the face of Club President Paulus.

‘This is the room that corresponds with the window, all right,’ said Paulus, who then retreated.

‘Okay, kiddywinkles, hands in the air!’ said one of the officers, a tiny man. ‘Where is it?’

‘We’ve had reports of a firearm discharging from the window of this room,’ said the other officer, who was barely bigger than his partner.

Both policemen were limescale-furred, rhubarb-coloured, typical Irish cops, though diminutive versions. Their badges said ‘Donnelly’ (the tiny one) and ‘McBrearty’ (the small one). And both were Irish, properly so: each had a marked brogue.

‘Ah,’ said the bigger one, spotting the gun on the floor. Inspecting it, he said, ‘It’s only some class of air rifle, Marky.’

‘Oh?’ said Marky, disappointment in his voice. With pistol and manic eyes still trained on Rickard, he said, ‘Are you sure, Rory? Looks like the real deal from where I’m standing.’

‘Nah, it’s an air rifle. Nothing illegal about that.’ To Rickard, Rory said, ‘Sorry about all the fuss then, sir.’

‘Wait! Wait!’ said Marky, waggling his pistol. To Rickard: ‘Let me see your ID card. And keep your hands up!’

‘I … ID card?’ said Rickard. ‘I’m not an American, officer.’

Marky’s face suddenly divested itself of tension and his arms relaxed, bringing down his pistol. ‘You’re from the old country?’ He looked to his partner. ‘He’s from the old country, Rory!’

‘I can hear it, Marky, I can hear it! Whereabouts in the old country are you from, sir? The midlands?’

‘I’m from Dublin,’ said Rickard.

‘Dublin!’ said Marky.

‘And where in Dublin? Drumcondra?’ said Rory.

‘No, I’m from the coast.’

‘I had an aunt owned a guesthouse in Drumcondra. The both of us are Donegal men,’ said Rory.

The officers slid their guns back in their holsters.

‘Well who’d have thought it?’ said Marky.

‘Well isn’t it a great place to be Irish all the same, New York, haven’t you found?’ said Rory.

‘Listen,’ said Marky, ‘I’ll have to ask you for identification of some description. Federal law, you understand. Have you got a passport?’

Rickard fetched his passport from the drawer in his bedside locker, which he had not disturbed since he put it there all those months before.

‘Ah yes, “Éire”,’ said Rory, taking the document. Then, holding it sideways, and after bringing it to the light of the porthole, a vexed expression crossed his face. ‘Do you realise you were only on a three-month holiday visa? And that it’s expired nearly four months?’

Rickard was bewildered. ‘Eh … “holiday” visa? Um …’

‘Oh-oh,’ said Marky, taking the passport from his partner. ‘Do you know what this means, now?’

Rickard didn’t answer.

‘Deportation,’ said Rory.

‘Deportation?’ said Rickard.

‘We’re afraid so. Next flight home,’ said Marky. ‘But …’ He looked to Rory, pursing his lips.

‘But …’ said Rory.

‘Yes,’ said Marky.

‘If you don’t say anything —’ said Rory.

‘We won’t either,’ said Marky.

They stood side by side now, both of them with their eyebrows — which in Marky’s case were drawn on in brown-red pencil — held to their highest extent in a gesture of encouragement and self-congratulation.

‘We’re very involved, the two of us,’ said Rory, finally, ‘in the campaign to improve the status of the undocumented Irish in New York.’

‘So you have our full, if clandestine, support,’ said Marky.

‘And now,’ said Rory, as the men gathered themselves, ‘we must be on our way. But if you’re not doing anything tonight, there’s a session on in the Donegal and Derry County Club in Flatbush. Always a great evening.’

They left the room. Rickard remained unmoving for several moments, unsure of how he should have responded to what had just taken place.

Eventually he stirred himself to chase the men down the corridor.

‘Excuse me now! Excuse me! I will say something about this! You officers are turning a blind eye to a breach in federal law! You must deport me! You’ll escort me to an airport immediately!’

Rory and Marky stopped, looked at each other, and turned around, waiting for Rickard to catch up.

‘Do you not know what’s good for you?’ said Marky.

‘If you don’t pipe down we will have you deported,’ said Rory.

‘You’ll be four days in a container in Jamaica Bay without —’

Marky cut himself off, cocking an ear to a sound that came rushing up the corridor like a phantom. A sound — like somebody singing, doing vocal exercises. The tone was sweet, true, rich, thick — taking up all of the air. And the singer was skilled, gliding among notes with birdlike ease.

The three men, captivated by the music, turned slowly about to face in the direction of the apparent source. Towards it they were pulled, heads forward, mouths agape, feet plodding. They were led to a balcony that looked down upon the grand stair hall.

All occupants of the building had been lured to the hall, or were still gathering, collecting on the floor below and on the other balconies. Their attention was absorbed by the figure on the walkway that vaulted the space. Its arms were awhirl, and it squirted about on its feet by means of a tremulous leg motion, rapt in its own performance, but it was not singing, as it had no mouth. Rather, the sound emanated from its head — which was white, smooth, shiny and featureless, save for an intimation of bone structure — travelling in all directions, evenly, as if pulsating from the peak of a radio transmitter.

But the sound was no longer just a fountain-fall of single notes: now it came as a polyphony, not-human, yet beautiful.

And then a song, only too human:

‘The head of my love bobs atop the blue waves.

(Come down to us now on the dark ocean floor!)

The closer I’m carried, the further away.

(Feel the salt of the sea in all of your sores!)

I pinch my legs round a white spuming steed.

(Throw him off west of Ushant, untameable mare!)

It expresses me to my homeland of green.

(Wash up on the rocks half a mile below Clare!)

I look for you now in sunshine and rain.

(She was stretched out in white on the dolmen’s cold slab!)

I ask an old woman who knows you by name.

(We are the familiars of such wicked hags!)

She tells me, my love, that you are quite dead.

(Tooty toot-toot toot-toot, tooty toot-toot toot-toot!)

And over your grave I unscrew my head.

(Poopy poop-poop poop-poop, poopy poop-poop poop-poop!)’

The final note reverberated in the great chamber of limestone and marble and bone, joined only by the sound of scattered outbreaks of weeping. Rory and Marky, on either side of Rickard, were inconsolable.

Bent backwards at the knees, face towards the sky, one hand pressed to breast, the other held out and open in supplication to some god of love, the figure held the pose of an operatic tenor until the last harmonic.