Jonathan Lee - High Dive

‘That’s it?’

Dawson laughed. ‘Well, we’ll throw in a couple of bats and a ball, for sure.’

‘No, I meant —’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ll just — I’ll wait to hear something, will I? Wait to hear whether I’m in? I’m keen, Mr McCartland. I’ll work hard. I–I want to help the cause.’ He could feel another future going grey.

Dawson raised his chin and blinked. ‘Listen, Dan. I’ve heard —’ One dog barked and the other dog whined. ‘I’ve heard that you’re useful. Is that right? Chaps at that Matt Talbot Youth Club. They say to me, as Patrick did, Now there’s a useful guy.’

‘Pool,’ Dan said. ‘Snooker. That’s probably all they meant.’

‘Come on now. No games. Ireland’s been modest too long. What are you good at, besides spoiling a story? An example. Let me think. My wife, the one-eyed one, she’s your bona fide whizz in the kitchen.’

Had they really brought him here to talk about hobbies? He chewed his lip, lined up some thoughts.

He hadn’t been a success at school but he was good at some things, small things. He had a talent for remembering. He was confident he’d be able to recite the right bits of the Green Book if all this went well and they swore him in. He could give them whole passages from the Bible, too. Lines from the pulpit seemed to lodge in his head; he liked the slant and pop of bygone language. He could draw a map from memory, replace a tyre without a jack, run a decent hundred yards and lift some heavyish weights. He could masturbate three times a day and still tug out a fourth before sleep. He was good in the garden, good at sorting his mother’s drugs, good at making bets with other kids and good half the time at winning them. He did some DIY for the community: bits of plumbing, guttering, electrics like his father used to do after the job at Gallaher had gone. He was proud of his country and he thought it was OK to be proud.

‘I’m not modest,’ he said. ‘I’m just shy with new people.’

They chose to take this as a joke. One of the dogs bit playfully at the folds of skin around the other’s neck.

‘Do y’know how to use an auto, Dan?’

He found himself looking to Mick for an answer. ‘No,’ he said.

Guns. A lot of the boys he knew wanted to join the Provos so that they could play with guns. Whereas his own reasons for wanting to join were … What were his reasons? To make a difference, long-term. To end the occupation, change people’s minds. To help fix up gutted businesses and protect the Catholic corner shops. To do service to the circumstances of his father’s death and to the fact that two of his brother’s friends, James Joseph Wray and Gerry McKinney, had been killed by the British Army on Bloody Sunday. Gerry unarmed with his hands in the air saying ‘don’t shoot, don’t shoot’, after which he was shot in the chest. James Joseph unable to move.

‘One at home,’ he said. ‘For protection. But it’s not an auto, and I never fired it.’

‘Interesting. Hear that, Mick? Prefers picking up bullets to popping them. I bet you Danny’s the guy at a party who sticks to the hard H 2O.’

With a snigger that seemed stolen from television Mick zipped up the bag that had contained the balls. He opened the other one, took out a shotgun and a handgun. The handgun he gave to Dan.

‘Feel it,’ Dawson said. ‘Lovely weight, no? Tend to jam, the autos, is the only thing. And now, if you don’t mind, you’ll shoot the dogs.’

Dan laughed. No one else joined in. Their faces were flushed and attentive but there was no hint of humour at all.

‘Or,’ Dawson added, ‘you can shoot one of them. Fifty per cent. You seem to be a left-hander — is that right, Dan? I could probably look after one dog. The thing is, looking after two, I don’t have the time, y’know? It’s cruel to have them.’

Still their expressions gave nothing away. Dawson blew his nose.

‘I’d keep hold of the lead with the other hand,’ Dawson said. ‘When you fire, I mean. Otherwise we’ll have a dog running around causing mischief, covered in wee bits of the other dog. Ugly, it’d be.’

Mick snapped open the shotgun. He looked inside and closed it again. His eyes settled on the ground and his bald head shone.

‘Is this a joke?’ Dan said.

Dawson shrugged. ‘I’m asking you to stiff two dogs for me, my friend. I could do it myself, but they’re my dogs, and I’ve had them exactly a year. So, do me a favour, save me from having to kill my own, will you?’

‘Is it loaded?’

Dawson smiled again. ‘I was told you were useful, Dan. Have I been misinformed?’

‘Like I said, I never used an auto.’

‘Same principle. Automatic. Manual. The thing they have in common is, you point them at something, squeeze the trigger, and the something stops being a problem.’

‘These dogs aren’t a problem.’

‘They’re a problem for me , Dan, you see.’ Hard and low in the voice now. Grave. ‘I’m starting to wonder at your team skills. I’m starting to think you lack a bit of the interpersonal.’

Dan looked at the two dogs and they looked back at him. Wet eyes. Wet noses. Excited. ‘I could take one home. Or both. I’ve got time to look after them, Mr McCartland, and money for food.’

‘I like to get tight, Dan, but that doesn’t mean I’m tight.’

‘No, of course.’

‘You’ve just joined an army. Time to wind your neck in, Dan.’

‘All I meant was —’

‘You want to take on some new dependants right now? Your ma not enough? The brother in the special home?’ Dawson shook his head. ‘You think the British Army hesitate when they shoot dogs on our streets, corpses on the Falls to show us they’re keeping an eye? Nothing was ever changed by squeamish men, Dan. History clears away the blood, records the results, but that doesn’t mean the blood wasn’t there. An Ireland occupied by the Brits will never be free. An Ireland unfree will never be at peace. Do you believe otherwise? Do you prefer to stand back and observe? Are you a watcher, Dan, is that it, you like to watch?’

Mick looked shifty now, embarrassed to be here. Again he touched his ruined ear. There was something newly benign in the calm sag of his mouth. A vulnerability, surely. It was Dawson who’d become the more brutish of the two. His thin neck had reddened, his thin lips had parted, his silver tongue was whipping up more words.

Maybe the brown one, with the patches on its tongue. Maybe that one is sick. He wants me to kill the sick dog. He’ll tell me afterwards that it was sick, leukaemia or whatever, and I’ll have passed the test.

With a steady left hand Dan lifted the gun and pointed it at the brown dog’s head. Be a person who does instead of says. With his right hand he gripped tight at the dog lead. Go on.

He thought, This would be easier if the dog was ugly, if the dog was a rat, if the dog looked angry or unkind, and these thoughts made him sure he was being weak.

If he got it between the eyes — the complex eyes, keen, watery they were — he’d kill it quickly. But if he aimed for the body he’d reduce his chance of missing. A body shot and then a follow-up? That’s what the RUC tended to do with guys they could label terrorists. But the other dog would be tugging, trying to get free, maybe covered in blood? Scared.

The brown dog looked at Dan, expectant, breathing through its mouth. The other had gone flat, nose nuzzled into the grass. Mick seemed — could this be right? — to be putting bits of toilet paper in his mouth. He was sticking the damp wads in his ears.

‘I’ll incentivise,’ Dawson said. ‘If you don’t shoot one of my dogs, Mick here is going to kindly shoot you.’

‘Kindly?’