Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

The suitcase is ancient. It could be out of Lime Street station in 1925. Leather and belted; a stout little general. He wears the dead father’s suit over his high-top purple trainers. The sun is psychedelic in hot streaks across the water. He looks back at himself from the water’s surface. His eyes are glazed with shell-shock and paracetamol. The suitcase is by his feet and contains all of his supplies and somehow his aspirations. He worries a bit about this brown leather suitcase. Open it up and the past might tip out—

on rum parade.

I’m sorry, John?

Nothing, Cornelius. My mind is tipping out my mouth.

That would often be the way. Rum I never drank.

Cornelius rocks the boat free of its berth and aims it over the stones. He mutters blackly beneath his breath and swears vengeance against the waves and world. He pushes the boat out to the water. He works at the ropes and works at the motor—

Bastarin’ fucken thing!

The seabirds hover watchfully with their mad eyes, all wing-span and homicide. He doesn’t know the names for birds. Which is neither here nor there. He kneels down by the water to find his face come closer—

fuck me.

The shock of the age that’s gone in. He looks older than Father fucking Time. Anxiety and fear and weight-of-love — these are the lines of his face.

Cornelius works the boat.

The motor catches and the rope unspools.

John climbs in and he almost falls but rights himself again — he’s awkward as a duck.

The boat puts out to the water.

——

Tell me again, John.

Okay.

You’re going out to this little island to scream?

I may well Scream.

You mean you’re going to be roaring out of you?

It’s certainly on the cards, Cornelius.

Like the crowd on Achill.

Oh?

But what’s it all about, John?

Primal scream therapy was devised by Dr. Arthur Janov.

I never heard of him.

He lives in California. He has a clinic there. I spent three months with Dr. Janov. He taught me how to Scream.

What’s it you’ll be screaming about?

It’s a technique for getting at buried pain and childhood trauma.

Why would you want to do that?

Because it weights you down.

And you want to be lighter on your feet?

Exactly so.

How light do you want to be?

How’d you mean?

What if you took off into the fucken sky?

You’re stuck in your ways, Cornelius. You don’t want to have your little world opened up.

My world’s about as far a ways open as I can fucken handle. What kind of pain have you buried?

Same kind we all have.

On account of being a child?

Well…

We were all children, John.

I lost my father. He went away.

We all lost our fucken fathers.

I lost my mother. She went and died.

We all have the dead fucken mothers.

So tell me how you get by, Cornelius!

It’s simple, John. I listen to what’s around me.

Okay…

And then?

Yeah?

I react.

You listen. And you react.

Because everything you need in the world is there to be heard.

You have my interest, Cornelius.

You can see very little in this world, John. But you can hear fucken everything.

——

He lies down on the boards of the boat as it edges out and moves. He fixes the suitcase for a pillow. He falls back into the grey-blue sky and the day augments itself by patches of cloud and patches of blue as the boat moves out across the bay.

Abroad in the fucking world.

Beg your pardon, John?

He closes his eyes and listens hard — the world is full of hollows — and he is sixteen again and coming down Bold Street — or maybe he’s seventeen — and he wants to fuck everything that moves but he’s in a fat phase and bevvied and he’s headed for the last train at Central station and he bounces off every shop window — a staggering John — and he stumbles and falls into a doorway — Cripps department store — and the sky above the rooftops shows the woozy stars and he heaves and pukes and laughs like a dog as he wipes the sick away and weeps.

He opens his eyes.

The sky rolls out and moves.

He is left to his own private woes and the weaving of his miseries — he’s an expert. Cornelius discreetly averts as John looks out and away, across the islands and the bay, and the boat dips and rises, and the engine judders, and the knuckle of the holy mountain jabs at the sky and the tiny islands are thrown about in all directions. He picks up a piece of dark wood like a baton and turns it — the way it feels snug and murderous in his hand.

The priest, Cornelius says.

For killing the fishies.

Or anything else might come at you.

Everywhere he looks there is another island but not his. All are familiar but none just right—

Well? says Cornelius.

No.

— because maybe the rocks are thrown about wrong or the way a hill runs at the sky is off. They pass another island and he sees a fast blur against the grey of the rocks and the movement is a quickness, a shiver, a silvering of the blood: the hare. They move farther out and the wind comes harder and in whippety slaps and he tunes into the slow boom and drift. The boat draws a curve around the tip of an island and comes on an open stretch of water. Across the colours of the bay they move and the way that his mood has lifted — now he’s beaming and in tremendous good heart, it must have been the hare. He is coming close in.

This feels right.

But in the near distance another boat moves on the water, and draws closer, and there are dark figures in a blur, crouching.

I can see lenses.

Down, John.

He lies flat to the boards of the boat.

Fuckers. Stay down, John.

Cornelius works slowly to turn the boat — it drifts again.

Stay down.

He lies hardly breathing on the boards of the boat.

There’s only one thing for it.

Yeah?

We’ll have to go and see our friends on Achill.

——

Paranoia drifts in white smoke across the sky.

The boat moves.

And here’s Cornelius—

his back to the May sun,

his face dark in shade,

his voice hoarse with soft cajole.

We should have headed here in the first place, John. There are no two ways about it. The Amethyst Hotel would be the very best place for you to wait out the assault.

The fucking where?

The Amethyst, John. On Achill.

Amethyst again? What the fuck is the Amethyst?

Sweet Joe’s place.

Who the fuck is Sweet fucking Joe?

Now on Achill Island generally, John, you’ll find the people are mean-spirited and small-minded and very aggressive. Tough nuggety foreheads on them. Hard lines to their faces. Tight little mouths. But of course this is no surprise in the wide earthly world…

He spits.

…because they’ve been jawing rocks at the side of the fucken road since the Lord Jesus was a bare-arsed child. We’ll have nothing whatsoever to do with the Achill people, John. That’s a promise to you and faithful. But the people where we’re headed are not Achill by the blood. No indeed. They are your own kind.

The boards of the boat groan and sing.

The cliffs of Achill rise up ahead.

Paranoia races its squadron gulls.

Who exactly are these people, Cornelius?

The people, he says, who have taken over the Amethyst Hotel.

Something odd, something familiar — Amethyst?

——

Cornelius works the boat between the rocks. The motor cuts; the boat is tied off. He is helped from the boat by a great knuckly paw. Which makes him feel lady-like and fey and just shy the parasol. They come from the water and climb. They walk an old track hemmed in by singing hedges in the breeze. The feeling near and near-abouts is medieval. The growth everywhere is very fucking alive — it makes a sore pulsing in his throat. On Achill there is the throb of big summer coming and everything breathes. In the Maytime we are untethered and time is not fixed. Or so he believes. The world is in a high, sexy mood. Tiny fists of dread are bunched beneath his skin. He is on Achill Island again — a bad-trip place — and the light is harsh and he is cold with fear.