Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

He does not answer to his name as it calls across the night and air.

——

It is such a clear night and warm. He walks into the fields until he is a good distance from the road. He can speak her name across the sky. Feel its lights again in his mouth. Fucking hell. He is so weary, and fucked, and Scouse — a sentimentalist. The ground’s soft give beneath his feet is luxurious. He wants to lie down into the soft rich cake of it and does. It is everything that he needs. He turns onto his belly and lies facedown in the dirt and digs his nails in hard—

Cling the fuck on, John.

The sphere of the night turns by its tiny increments. The last of the night swings across its arches and greys. He can do anything he wants to do. He can live in a Spanish castle; he can run with the tides of the moon. He turns his face to settle his cheek on the dirt. He rests for a while. Mars is a dull fire in the eastern sky. He lies for a long calm while until the hills are woken and the birds come to flirt and call and he feels clairvoyant now and newly made.

John lies saddled on the warm earth and he listens to its bones.

——

He’s been coming loose of himself since early in the spring. He knows all the signs of it. One minute he’s lost in the past and the next he’s shot back to the now. There is no future in it. The year is on the turn and greening and everything is too fucking alive again.

And he has been haunted by his own self for such a long while, he has been endlessly fascinated by his own black self this long while — he is aching, he is godhead, he is a right bloody monster — but now he is thirty-seven—

I mean thirty fucking seven?

— and he wants at last to be over himself — he’s all grown — and he looks out and into the world and he can see it clearly and true for the kip it is and the shithole it is and the sweet heaven — the mons — of love and sex and sleep it is, or can be, and he is scabrous (there’s a word) and tender — he is both — and there’s a whole wealth of fucking motherlove — even still — being the sentimental Scouse — her death’s gleam his dark star — and the old town that was coal-black and majestic — wasn’t it? — or at least on its day and the way it was giddy by its night — alewaft and fagsmoke, peel of church bell — and a rut down an alleyway — wasn’t there? — midnight by church bell, cuntsmell—

oh my sweet my paleskin my soft-lipped girlie

— and now he’s got a throb on, and he’s coming down Bold Street, and it’s the city of Liverpool, and he’s seventeen years old, and he’s a North-of-England honky with spud-Irish blood and that is what he is and that is all that he is and inside him, deep down— listen —the way the drunken notes stir.

——

He sits up in the field. He looks around himself warily. Jesus fuck. He sits in the raw grey light and the cold damp air. He has inarguably placed himself in fucking Ireland again. He has a think about this and he has a fag. A whip of cold wind comes across the field and the tall grasses flex and sway — he sneezes. They say that your soul stops, don’t they? Or at least fucks off for a bit. He stands up for a coughing fit. His poor lungs, those tired soldiers. He proceeds on walkabout. Listen for a song beneath the skin of the earth. Seeing as he cannot fucking find one elsewhere. He aims back for the road again. Panicky, yes, but you just keep on walking. And maybe in this way, John, you can leave the past behind.

——

He finds his own trace back through the long grass. He crosses the bridge in wet light. A sombre friend, a heron, stands greyly and still and what’s-the-fucking-word by the edge of the river and town. He walks on up the town. Sentinel is the word. His words are fucked and all over. Weeks of half-sleep. Weeks of night sweats and hilarity. Except this time with no fucking songs in tow. The little town is deserted as a wartime beach. He sits down on a bench in the empty square. Have a breather, Missus Alderton. He has a look around. Okay. He must look like one half of a Pete-and-Dudley routine. Why exactly is he here in this nothing town in this nowhere place and on the wrong side of the ocean and so far from those that he loves and home? Maybe he knows that out here he can be alone.

It’s the earliest of the morning and still but for the leaves. He walks the edges of the square under the moving leaves. He goes by the sleeping grocery and the sleeping church and there’s a smug little infirmary, too — he thinks, that’ll be me. His empathy — to be old and sick, how would that be? Stout matron smells of talc and jam tarts. A last shimmer in the throb department? Ah but forlornly, yes. Okay. Move along, John. Keep it fucking cheerful, let’s. Random words appear on his lips as he walks the few and empty streets of the early morning town. Here’s a new entry — woebegone. But that’s quite lovely, actually. He doubles back to the square again. Senses a half-movement down below: the heron, as it turns its regal clockwork head to watch him now from its place by the river. Bead of eye from one to the other. News for me, at all? Nothing good, I expect. The metallic gleam of its grey coat in the cold sun. Otherworldly, the sense of it — something alien there. Walk the fuck on again. He sees a fat old dog having a snooze down a sideway. Ah sweetness. He watches for a moment and he gets a bit teary, in fact, about the juddery little sighs of the dog’s breathing — he is out in the world now — and his fat sleeping belly and he can see his doggy dreams of bones and cats and flirty poodles smoking Gitanes and perking their high tight poodle asses in the air.

The air is thick and salty. You could bite a chunk off. Sniff out the sea-bite’s hint-of-vulva, John, mummy-smell. He has a tricky five minutes but he comes through. He turns up a display board for tourists. The board has a map on and now all the names from nine years past — his last visit — come rattling again. Newport, Mulranny, Achill Island and there’s the great jaggedy bay, Clew Bay, with all its tiny islands. There are tens and dozens and hundreds of these islands. He reads that there are three hundred and sixty-five islands all told; there is an island for every day of the fucking year—

So how will he tell which island is his?

There are rustles and movements. He is alone but not — he can hear the shifting of the town ghosts. Clocking off from the night shift. He blinks three times to make those fuckers disappear. He has his ritual things. He has a fag and listens. He inhales deep, holds it, and his heart thumps; he exhales slow. He wants to make a connection with you now. He is thirty-seven years along the road — the slow-quick, slow-quick road — and he lives in a great fortress high above the plain where the fearsome injuns roam — those bold Manhattoes — and now if he whispers it, very very softly — a particular word — and if you listen for it — very very carefully—

Do you think you can hear him still?

——

The fat old dog moseys out from the sideway. There is evidence here of great male bewilderment. It’s in the poor bugger’s walk; it’s in his carry. He looks down the length of the town and shakes his head against it. He looks on up the town — the same. He does not appear to notice yet the presence of a stranger. He sniffs at the gutter — it’s not good. He has a long, slow rub off the grocer’s wall — it’s still there, and the pebbledash gets at the awkward bits nicely. He edges onto the square on morning patrol but he’s hassled-looking, weary, and the fleshy haunches roll slowly as he goes. He stops up in the middle of the square, now in a devout or philosophical hold, as the breeze brings news to twitch the bristles of his snout, and he growls halfheartedly, and turns to find the line of scent and a tatty man in denims on the bench.