Donal Ryan: A Slanting of the Sun

Four cars turned off the main street and parked in the square in the last few minutes. Faces of misery on the people in them. Maybe they’ve all a funeral to go to. They were all dickied up to the nines, but no colour nor smiles. There’s a church there below the road behind the hill I’m nearly sure. There’s one somewhere nearby, anyway. I see no spire, but my aspect is low. A woman across the aisle from me on the early bus had a missal and a rosary beads and she tramped off with purpose that way once we got off. This town has a smell about it, like stale milk. A warm breeze sweeps it into my nose. The one smell I hate, I don’t know why. I might gag if I had any bit in my stomach. It was the Bensons or something to eat. No contest. Fags take the edge off of hunger anyway.

THERE’S ONLY THE one shade in this town it looks like. Saw him earlier, scratching on the station steps. Fine sugary chops on him. No full-time squad car even, I’d say. Cutbacks. I’d bet he’s not the fastest runner, either. He finishes up at five in the evening according to a notice posted on the station door. After that it’s your own lookout. You have to tell your troubles into an intercom and a peeler miles distant will sympathize.

I lifted these boots lovely yesterday evening from a gearbag flung down at the edge of a hurling pitch. The lowering sun’s dying glare covered me. Old lads training. Junior A or B, jogging red-faced around, short pucks, laughing at each other. I remembered that craic from years ago. Funny how the senior players when too senior get called junior again. It must rankle. Signs on they paste one another vicious. Wallop younger lads for having the cheek to exist. I have the nearly new desert boots of one of them anyway. I was away up the road miles before he panted back to his bag. I left him my old tackies as consolation.

I’m baking now all the same. I might cool myself among that willow’s strands. I’m prone to sunburn. My whole head swelled one time so burnt it got, filled with fluid. A tasty little she-doctor lanced it for me free. They have to, you know, if you turn up empty-pocketed. First, do no harm. Harm it would have been to run me unseen to. Foul pus from my roasted crown oozed onto her floor. Not to worry, she said, and smiled, swooping deftly to wipe up. Lord, she was a dinger. Then she read me kindly: melanoma, lotion, stay out of it altogether, cap, and I nodded dumbly, eyes down her front, like a plastic dog on a dingbat’s dashboard, placating her.

THIS TYPE OF a town polices itself. Squinty eyes in every window. Widow women, risen early, long days to fill with looking; housewives watching for returning children, listening for the squeak of bicycles home safe; well-fed merchantmen protecting their shimmering shopfronts, their patches of footpath swept white. Farms of land outside town, cuteness. Hollow-cheeked tooth-lost wasters at pub doors sucking needle-thin rollups, watching for someone worse or worse off to balm themselves with generous comparison. I have them all well clocked the same way they have me clocked. All I need do now is watch and wait, smoke my fags slowly, each one to the very stub, to the burnt lip. How many will be left when I’m lifted, I wonder?

A swallow hurls itself sunward. High flies, is that a good omen or bad? Small-talk is all omens are. I’ll repair to the willow’s shade.

I’VE BEEN HERE now, seen and unseen, for a half a morning and most of a deathly afternoon. One slow pass of the timeshared squad is all I’ve under my belt. Narrow eyes atop a wide face, regarding me darkly. A thick neck bulging over a collar of policeman grey-blue. Working up to it. Those funereal people shuffled back to their cars a good while ago and drove off again stop-starting, rolling slow to join the end of a cortège coming over from behind the hill. I was right, so. Wreaths in the hearse window propped against the coffin sides, twisted into words. Saying: MAM.

More came, parked up, shopped, filled boots, away; no one giving too much regard to the man half veiled by willow tree. I’ll have to throw a shape if this keeps up, unplanned for. I’ll think on my feet, don’t worry. The old one sold me the fags. I’ve a pain starting in the low part of my back, a hot ache, spreading upwards. I’m getting into bad humour. This footpath unwalked on all day. My sweating fly-bothered holdall unheeded.

I GAVE A GOOD share of my life in England. I never drew social, there nor here. No numbers to my names. Never had a need. Invisible men can’t very well appear looking for pensions, though. All a man needs is energy. Once you’re careful you’re free as the wind. Some people clock for work now with the prints of their fingers. Clockwork people. That’s a slippery slope. Pickpocketing at a race meeting: sweets from babies. Confidence tricks: a copybook full of them I had once, scrawled, words and diagrams, unreadable to others. Never go too deep though. Open windows on summer nights in redbrick mansions in silent suburbs. I floated in and out gently with the breeze. Watches, bracelets, necklaces, rings, unlaundered silky things, crisp banknotes. Barely any weight on me. All things easily jettisoned. I slunk unseen like a rat. Watching always for cameras lately, though. They’re going to start putting chips into people soon, into their flesh, to track them from space satellites. Plenty old lags already have them over there, clamped to their ankles. Sitting chipped, filling their faces, watching their programmes.

I used to pal about with a few ringdings beyond, when I was very young. We’d smoke on the kerb of the street and watch the respectable people pass. The others would snigger and smirk, I’d only look, and remember. We’d pull a job here and there, nothing major, nothing you’d be remembered for. Day labourers would give us a dark eye passing home, weak with tiredness and hunger, pierced by thirst. Money made for other men with the sweat they dripped into foreign soil. Soaked with it that land, the blood and sweat of Irish sons. Nothing gave to them in return only black livers and rattling chests. Standing bent-backed for their finishes at the thresholds of the giving, pleading for succour with their hangdog eyes and pillowcases of belongings. All pride gone, worked out of them. Living ghosts, looking for a deathbed and a cardboard council coffin. Cap-doffing at heaven’s gatepost. Spent.

I lived with an English one for a small while. A bird. Handy. Met her at a bingo hall. I needed a place to lie low and gather myself, and she wanted a clean pet. One of them ones that always needs a fella around, just for the saying of it. Shapely. Rough, though. Council bungalow in a cul-de-sac. Loved television, forever shushing me. One damp day I lamped her close-fisted into the mouth so hard her chin hung swinging from her jaw. Sloppy really, weak, to let that out of me over a bit of shushing, but it fair seared into me for a finish. I took what bit of jewellery she had and forty-nine pounds sterling from a jar in her kitchen cupboard and stepped lightly out of there. I hardly remember now what name I had in that place. Still and all I remember to the pound the amount I lifted from her. Funny the things you log. I often thought to straighten those names I used in my mind. Or am I as well off forgetting them? What’s in a name?

A savage slap I gave her, straight out of the blue, blindside. Swelled knuckles after it: stupid carry-on. She had a Superking on the go, halfway to her mouth, her lips pursed for the drag, eyes fixed on the borebox, a shush just finished. She had no notion what hit her. She’d only ever seen the bare smiling shell of me. As she slumped there stupid on the plastic-covered couch, conked, mouth slack, I whispered to her: Now. Fucking shush me now.

I fleeced the lamb, gave her unfeeling tits a grope goodbye and slung my narrow hook. Her Superking’s lit end lay smouldering a hole in her shell suit. Cremation. No tracks left. That’s no way to behave, though. I’m not proud.